Magical Product Swap

 

Over at Jessica Stanford's blog, she hosts a product swap every few months. I decided to join this time and LUCKY ME... I got matched up with Marcy at Saddle Up for Second Grade!  I was so excited to get her because she has some awesome stuff. She is also one of my TpT/blogger friends and was my niece's teacher in Texas!

After browsing through her TpT store, I settled on trying the Place Value Activity Pack: Hundred, Tens, and Ones. I already had her Pen Pals: Let's Make New Friends pack and just LOVE it. So, I knew this place value pack would be great too! Here's what the cover looks like...

This is actually a bundle of some of her individual place value activities. It includes I Spy Place Value, Mystery Numbers task cards, Place Value Memory, and my favorite - Place Value Slap Attack.

My class was so excited when I showed them that I had a bunch of new math centers. They LOVE math centers and these looked like so much fun! For this review, I'm going to focus on the Slap Attack game because I don't know if many of you are familiar with this game. I wasn't until I got this product.

Slap Attack consists of 20 cards with base-ten block models of numbers that look like this...

To play, you need 3 people. One will act as a referee. You start with the cards face-down. A player turns up one card and the first person to slap the card (not too hard!), gets to tell what number is shown. If the answer is correct, he or she gets to keep the card. If not, the other person gets a chance to answer and keep the card. The referee's job is to decide who slapped the card first. After going through all the cards, the player with the most wins.

My students LOVED this game! I was actually a little afraid of the slapping getting out of hand but they were really good with it. Having a referee definitely helps and they were all wanting to have that job. My camera wasn't cooperating but I was able to get a couple of decent pictures of my students playing.

 

 

These two girls played the game at least 5 or 6 times. As you can see in the pictures, they were turning over two cards at a time. After the few games, they decided to turn over two cards and slap the one with the largest number. Wow, what a great way to differentiate the game and they thought it up themselves! Some other things I really liked about this activity were the clear images of the blocks and the great size of the cards - not too small and not too big. Just right for second grade hands. You could also use these cards as flash cards to build quick recognition.

Since I was having camera issues, the rest of my pictures didn't turn out. But I'm planning to put all of the games out again next week. I'll be sure to get more pictures and add them to this post. I highly recommend a visit to Marcy's TpT store to check out this great Place Value Activity Pack (and many more awesome products). And don't forget to hop on over to her blog. You'll find a lot of super second grade stuff there (including a review of one of my products)!

Fun & Games

So, there are 35 days left of school. It sounds like so little, yet feels like oh so much. You know how those last few weeks just draaaaaag by. Today was a real test of my nerves and I had to pull out the dirty little trick of saying, "Hmm, I wonder how many of you will be ready to go to third grade in a few weeks." That snaps them to attention for at least a few minutes.

The next trick up my sleeve strategy to make the days go by a little faster is to find some new games and interactive things to do. I already use the Jeopardy review games on Mrs. Zirullo's website for our weekly reading skills (for Macmillan Treasures). But I just found this very promising site full of Jeopardy games for all kinds of skills. You can even make your own!  Now, my district has very kindly blocked this site as it falls into the banned category of games (God forbid!) but I've worked my way around that. It really is quite fabulous! Check it out...

The site has other exciting things too, like a random name generator for choosing students and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire games.

Tomorrow we'll be watching this very cheesy, but entertaining and informative, video explaining non-fiction text features... (ok, I can't figure out how to save the picture, but here's the link... http://vimeo.com/23765240)

Another fun freebie I found is Scootpad. It's online practice in reading and math (aligned to Common Core!) and you can sign up your whole class. They can work on it at school or home and get this... you can assign your own rewards for them to earn like lunch with the teacher or treasure box or whatever. Even better, the parents can do the same thing! One of my students is working to earn a new fish for her fish tank. Her dad added the reward to her account and when she gets 400 coin, she can trade them for a fish. Cool, huh?

So, what games and technological tricks do you have up your sleeve for the end of the year? I'd love some more good ideas!

Educents, 48 Hours, and New Cabinets

I just stumbled across this new site for teachers called Educents. It looks like they'll be having "flash sales" of teaching resources with deep discounts, up to 90% off. I'm always on the lookout for cheap school stuff, so I'm kind of excited to see what they'll have! The site goes live on Tuesday. Has anyone else heard of this?

The site says if you register before Tuesday, they'll send you a $10 gift card to use once they go live. Hmm... $10 in free teacher stuff? I like it! I wonder if you'll have to pay shipping or tax... Guess I'll wait and see.

Well, in 48 hours, I'll be standing in front of my class once again (sitting actually, in my blue chair that I use for whole group reading on the rug). Spring break is almost officially over... waaaaaahh!  It went by way too fast! But I am quite pleased with what I did during this past week. I refinished the cabinets in BOTH bathrooms! That's right...all by myself.

First of all, let me tell you how they used to look. Think original 1981 builder's grade cabinets. Yeah, that bad. They were almond formica with hideous faux oak doors and big, square wood knobs. Absolutely wretched! I found this kit called Cabinet Transformations by Rust-o-leum at Home Depot. It was $75 (way cheaper than new cabinets!) and decided to give it a try after doing some research online. It was actually pretty darn easy and they look FAB-U-LOUS! I used the espresso color which is a very dark brown. I can't stop going into the bathroom just to look at them. I'm thinking I might actually tackle the kitchen next. It's even uglier than the bathrooms were but it's big... 23 cabinets! And I'm not sure what to do about the gigantic faux oak bar where the kids sit to eat but I'll deal with that later.

Happy spring break to anyone who is having it now or is still looking forward to it!

Math Game Freebie & Spring Break Secret Sale

Happy spring break!!  What a wonderfully relaxing day it has been, made even better by the fact that I DON'T HAVE TO GET UP EARLY TOMORROW!!! So to celebrate, here's a new freebie from my TpT store...

and I'm throwing a "Secret Sale" just for my followers.

Feel free to share the link with your friends but I'm not going to advertise it on pinterest or anywhere else. It's just for you!

We Have A Winner...Math Journals

First, I want to congratulate the 4 winners of my 100 Follower Giveaway! They won some incredible items. Thank you to everyone who entered. Hopefully you discovered some new sellers that you didn't know about before or some new resources to use with your class.
 

My students have been struggling with problem solving in math. They are GREAT at adding and subtracting but boy, when you put it into words, they suddenly have no idea what to do. It's been frustrating but I *think* I may have found a solution.... math journals! Now I really have no idea how to really do math journals, I mean the official way (is there one?). I just pulled this idea together one day, purely out of frustration, and it seemed to work. So, I kept doing it and it kept working. Here's what it looks like...

Here's how it works:  I write an answer on the board and they copy it into their notebooks (The answer is...). Then the students have to come up with a problem to go with it. On the top half of the paper, they draw it and on the bottom, they write it out. They started out with very simple problems but now they are creating two and three-step ones that involve addition, subtraction, and even some multiplication (from my higher kids). We do this every, single day and it is making a world of difference! Now when we have assessments with story problems, almost all of them can figure out what operation to use and get the right solution. Next year I plan to start using journals from day one!