Maths Centers in the Morning!

Finally, I'm back to school after the summer hols and back to the blogging after a long hiatus!

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For the last two months before the holidays, I began trying out maths centers as an alternative to literacy and play/oral language centers. While the centers did not involve as much 'exploration' of the room as my literacy centers, this almost suited the mood of the children at the end of the year, as they can get quite hyper as the year comes to a close and the weather gets finer. I felt that these activities were still very enjoyable for the children but involved less classroom management issues as the children completed them all at their desks.

Here were the centers I chose (some of these I got off this site: http://www.kidscount1234.com/mathcentersandgames.html where you can find loooads more maths center ideas - colours, shapes, tessellation etc):

1.) Counting counters:

Each child at the table had one of the above sheets with different numbers on it. There was a bowl of counters in the middle of the table. The children put a given number of spots on the butterfly/ladybird, they put counters in the bag and 'apples' on the tree using counters. These sheets could be made using the numbers 1-10 but I felt at the end of the year that my students were well able to use numbers 1-20.

http://ithinkmaths.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/counters1.jpg?w=500

2.) More or Less Cubes:

The children were given a bowl/bag of cubes each (with two colours of cubes in the bowl). They wrote the two colour names at the top of the sheet over each column. They had to close their eyes and pick a handful of cubes out of the bowl/bag. Then they wrote in the amount of each colour they picked out under the colour name on the top two lines. They circled the colour number there was more of on this go. They repeated the exercise until the sheet was completed.

(Trust me, its easier than it sounds!)

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3.) Making Number Necklaces:

I gave each child at this table a sheet of the above sample and a jar of beads. They had to line up the beads around the shapes to make a 'necklace'. I would also consider having the children thread spools onto string for this exercise if you have the resources to do this and can label the strings with numbers!

                                                                                         

http://www.craftsuppliesforless.com/images/pearlized%20pony%20beads.jpg                                             http://www.bababump.com/

4.) Piggy Banks:

The children at this table each got one of these sheets of piggy banks each and they had to fill them with coins left on the table. We made quantities of 2c-10c using 1c, 2c, 5c and 10c coins.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/business/03/euro_cash/currency/img/5_2_1.jpg

5.) Race to Ten:

This is my favourite station as it is so brilliant to use as an informal way of introducing take away and revising addition with infants. Each child gets a game board and each of them take turns around the circle to roll two dice. One dice has numbers 1-6 on it and the other has a mixture of + and - signs on it. If they get a +3 they put on three counters, if they get a - 4 they take away 4 counters from the board, etc. The first child to ten is the winner.

These stations could definitely be changed and added to throughout the year especially with other bought maths games/shape hunts/number hunts/colour hunts etc, but I found these to be a good start with my Senior Infants. I may get a bit more adventurous with them as time goes on! 

Happy Teaching!

Water, water everywhere!

Water as a theme offers lots of opportunities for learning - here are some of the lessons I taught based around water last week!

1) Geography/Science/Environmental Awareness and Care: Water Collages

We talked about why water is important and whether we could live without it. I then got them to come up with ways people use water. The children who answered correctly chose the picture on the table that best suited their answers and stuck it on the chart until all pictures were used.
The following day I posed the question of whether it was only people who need water to live. We discussed where we might find fish in the town I am teaching in - whether there is a sea, river or lake nearby. Following the discussion of the differences between these, we identified our local river and nearby lakes. They suggested animals that live on a river or a lake. They chose the correct picture from the hidden table and stuck it on another chart. 

We then talked about how litter affects people and creatures living in the lakes and rivers and how we could stop them littering these. We decided to create posters/signs to leave by the river to encourage people to stop littering. We talked about what pictures they could include and what words they would need to use. We then mounted these around a large river chart on the wall outside the classroom. (Lesson idea derived from Greenschools website lesson plans).

2) Science: Floating and Sinking

We identified the terminology of floating and sinking and we talked about objects they felt would sink and which would float. We tested various objects in pairs, estimating and giving reasons for their choice first and then marking this in in crayon on the worksheet. We then tested it and talked about why it floated or sank based on weight, materials, etc (Floating objects were identified as being light, made of wood or being filled with air for example). We marked the answer in in pencil. We checked out the BBC website for a revision concluding activity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/digger/5_7entry/8.shtml

3) Music: The Little Mermaid
We listened to the Little Mermaid songs 'Under the Sea' and 'Part of Your World' and discussed whether the songs were happy or sad and why. We picked suitable actions to match the sad/happy quality of the music and used these to respond to the music through movement.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes.

4) Maths: Capacity

Compared various sized containers and whether they would hold more or less water than each other. Tested it out by filling one container from another.

We estimated and then tested out how many egg cups or spoons of water (and sand) would fill the containers.

We chose which method of measuring we would use: cups or spoons depending on the size of the container.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

5) Gaeilge: An Aimsir

We described the weather every morning. We learned actions to accompany the weather elements (ag cur báiste, an grian ag taitneamh, an ghaoth ag séideadh, etc) and mimed these, getting others to guess what we were showing. We picked pictures from the mála draíochta and described the weather shown in the picture. We sang the song: "An bhfuil cead agam dul amach?":

One half of the room sang: 'An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, dul amach ag sugradh?' The other half of the room replied with ' Níl cead agat dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, níl cead agat dul amach, tá sé ag cur báiste/tá cead agat dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, tá cead agat dul amach, tá an grian ag taitneamh.'

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

6) Religion:
There is also ample opportunity to integrate water into religion as Alive O2's term 3 lesson 1, 2 and 3 are all based on the theme of water, however we have not progressed this far in our Alive- O programme!

Spring Has Sprung!

My latest adventures with Senior Infants have been based on the theme of spring.
We started off with acknowledging the signs of spring by looking out the window and then at a spring picture which things kept disappearing from! They had to tell me what sign of spring (daffodils, cherry blossoms, lambs, nests, frog spawn etc.) had gone missing each time.
We also acknowledged our new desktop wallpaper which I feel is an excellent daily reminder of the season!

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

1) History: 

We read the story of the Ugly Duckling talking about how he felt, how we could help him if we were there at the time and how we should treat people who are different. We then drew a picture of an event from the beginning, middle and end of the story. We cut the pictures out and gave them to our partners to sequence and stick onto some nice blue paper. 

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

2) English: Instructional writing: 
Following the theme of the ugly duckling we created our own four step ducklings from playdough. (Roll a small ball for the head, a big one for the body and make a tail, stick on googly eyes, stick on a beak.) After they had been made we drew a picture of each stage of the process in four boxes and wrote a sentence about each stage under each picture. We then took a picture of the finished product to stick onto our instructions at the end.

Next week we will be planting seeds and they will undertake a similar task following this activity!

( Edit: See our sown onions!

)

3) Science and Geography: 
We focused on animals and their young. We read the story ' Baa! Moo! What Will We Do?' about some farm animals who lost their babies.                                       

                                                                   Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

We helped the mother animals find the baby animal pictures that I had placed/hidden around the room. They named the baby animals when they spotted them and called out to them using the poem we are learning: Come My Chicks:

Come my chicks,

It's time for bed,

that's what mother hen said,

But first I'll count you just to see,

If you have all come back to me,

Chick 1, chick 2, chick 3, Oh dear!

Chick 4, chick 5, yes you're all here!

We replaced the words 'chicks' and 'hen' with whatever animal we were calling out for at the time. E.g piglets, pig, foal, horse, lamb, sheep, calf, cow, gosling, goose.

We also discussed differences and similarities between the mothers and their young as we found the baby animals.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

We also focused on the frog life cycle and played this fun game to learn and discuss the stages of a frog's life: http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/scienceforkids/life_cycle/frog_lifecycle.htm

We then drew the stages ourselves and labelled them after. 

4) Art: 

We painted spring flowers focusing on different flowers we could make with different brush sizes: We dabbed big fluffy paintbrushes on the page to paint fluffy yellow flowers, red thin brushes to paint thin petals and thin dots of blue paint to paint bluebell like flowers. Then we painted in all the stems on the flowers and some grass to finish off!

                  

5) Music:

We sang the song 'Over In the Meadow' (From the Right Note Programme: Senior Infants) about all the animals and their young and we made sound effects between each verse to represent the animal we sang about.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

6) History (lesson 2): 

We read the Irish Legend of the Children of Lir on this website:

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/learning-zone/primary-students/infants/english/the-children-of-lir/ 

We linked this with drama by acting out important scenes from the story as we read through it e.g. the transformation of the children into swans, their travelling from lake to lake and their changing from swans to old people. We then drew pictures from the story and wrote a sentence to accompany what we had drawn. We sequenced some of the images drawn following this activity. 

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes.