Money Madness! {Freebie!}

Money, money money! It's crunch time ladies!  According to CCSS, 2nd graders are expected to master time and money.  So that means we will be eating, sleeping, and speaking time and money for the next several weeks.  We're still finishing up a chapter on 3-digit addition and subtraction, but since my kids just FLY through those lessons, I thought I'd use the extra time to get money rolling. 

Right now we are only working with dimes, nickels, and pennies.  But all of these activities can be adapted to use quarters.  (Half-dollars are not included in the core but I'm sure they can be integrated somewhere!)  

These activities are great for time-fillers but would also be perfect for math centers.  I have the worksheets in plastic sheet protectors (trying to save a few trees!) but you could just ask easily laminate the pages and dry erase works just as well.

Money Grab Bag

Here the student has a mesh baggie with nine coins: 3 dimes, 3 nickels, and 3 pennies.  She pulls three random coins out of the bag, records each coin from largest to smallest.  Then she counts the coins and writes the total amount on the line.  Easy-peasy!  Later, I can just toss in 3 quarters and the activity goes to a whole new level!

For this activity, you need a worksheet and a set of coins:  3 dimes, 3 nickels, and 3 pennies.

Click on the image to get this freebie.

Nickel Strike-Out

Here the students are working with just nickels.  Most of our coins are divisible by five.  That means we can skip count by fives to count money.  This activity makes the students think of 25 cents as 5 nickels, or 10 cents as 2 nickels.  To play, the student rolls a money die, writes the amount on the line.  Then counts out enough nickels to show that amount and write how many nickels it took.  Since the 1 cent doesn't work so well, I made those the "Strikes".  If they roll a 1 cent, they get a strike, three strikes, you're out!

These money dice were hand-me-downs so I'm not sure where they came from.  The six sides have 1 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 25 cent, 50 cent, and $.  If you can't get your hands on a set of dice like this, you can easily make them or have the students draw cards out of a bag.

For this activity, you need the worksheet, several nickels, and one money dice.

Click on the image to get this freebie.

Money Match-Up

Here the group is taking a given money amount and showing it using dimes, nickels and pennies.  The student just draws a money card from the stack, writes it on the line and then uses coins from the mesh bag to show that amount.  Right now, the card only go up to 30 cents.  As we get further into money, I'll toss in the higher card amounts.  

 For this activity, you need the worksheet, a set of coins, and the money cards.  

 The money cards were leftover from an old calendar set.  I couldn't bring myself to toss these.  You can very easily make your own set for this.

Click on the image to get this freebie.

Pay the Bank

Not only does this get the kiddos working with money, it also reinforces place value.  The student rolls a dice and counts that many pennies out onto their ten frame.  With each turn they should fill up the frame.  Once it's full, they trade the ten pennies for a dime.  The first student to earn 5 dimes wins!

For this activity, you will need a ten frame, a dice, several dimes and pennies.

BTW..... the mesh bags that I keep (most) of my small manipulatives in came from Boxcars and One-Eyed Jacks.  They are perfect for small things like coins and dice.  The baggies also make disinfection super-simple.  Just toss your bags (manipulatives and all!) into the wash with a touch of detergent and bleach and the germs wave bye-bye!

The sheet protectors came from C-Line.  You can get a set of 10 for $23.  I know, that sounds high but these babies can sure take a beating!  Click on the picture to take you to the C-Line site.

Enjoy the latest weather, friends!

~Stacy

Small Group Work and a FREEBIE!

Wednesday is always a day the kiddos look forward to because it is Small Groups Day.  Every Wednesday, I group the students and give them a full hour to "play games".  At least, that is how they see it.  Actually, they are working on special skills that need a little tweaking.

This week, I had the groups work on Parts of Speech (Nouns, Verbs, & Adjectives),

Place Value with Horse Race,

Spelling and Phonics skills with Versatiles,

and Computer Skills with ABC Ya!

One of the skills that I discovered very early on in the year that needed A LOT of work was Parts of Speech.  My sweeties really had a tough time naming nouns, verbs and adjectives within sentences.  So I pulled together this activity.

I pulled out my noun, verb, and adjective word tiles that I got from Wal-Mart a million years ago. 

The students were to draw a tile out of the bag and write the word in the correct section on a worksheet. 

Here is a sample of what the first group had going so far.  

Click the worksheet or here for the FREEBIE!

This shows a group working on Place Value using StrataDice from Box Cars and One-Eyed Jacks.  If you would like to learn how to play the game the kids are playing, you can read a post I did on these last year.

This is a quick pic of a student working with VersaTiles.  I discovered VersaTiles (an ETA product) years ago when I was a tutor for Sylvan Learning Center.  These are a great way for your students to work on important skills without killing a bunch of trees.  I will be doing a post soon on this incredible product and it's uses in the classroom.  

Finally, the babes had a chance to get on the computer and play some learning games through ABC Ya!

This week I let them choose which games to do, but soon I will be giving them direction on what to be working with.

Like I said, we have an hour for these activities, so I usually give the groups 20 minutes to work and then we rotate to the next station.

That's all for now!  Be sure to grab that FREEBIE for your own parts of speech activities!

~Stacy

 

Horse Races & Animal Teeth!

It must seem like I'm a walking, talking billboard for Boxcars and One-Eyed Jacks!  Once again, I'm posting about another of their WONDERFUL products.

 

These are their Stratedice.  There is a wealth of games you can play using these babies.  Today I had my class using them to practice place value to hundreds and multiplication. 

 

Horse Race

Here's how you play:  Pair your students and give them one tray.  The kids CAREFULLY empy both trays and divide the dice by color.  This game is played like War.  Each student takes two dice and rolls them.  If you are playing Place Value, they arrange the dice into tens and ones.  The student with the biggest (or smallest if you choose) wins that round.  The winning dice go onto the Race Track (the black tray) and the losing dice go to the Barn (the clear tray).

 

The important thing to remember here, is that the students must learn to verbalize WHY they won. 

For example, the white dice has the number 651.  The blue has 411.  The white dice wins because "6 hundreds are greater than 4 hundreds."

 

 

After a few rounds of playing Place Value Horse Race, I had them work on Multiplication.  Here the kids roll two dice and find the product of the two numbers.  The student with the highest number wins.  Remember, they need to verbalize why they win!

 

Since I'm talking about multiplication, I just HAD to share something that I discovered a couple years ago and have used it to help my students remember their multiplication facts. 

 

It is called Memorize in Minutes: The Times Tables.  It was written by Alan Walker.  It doesn't have a cutsy cover, so I just made one.  What the author has done is come up with short stories to go along with each fact and it creates a memory hook.  Each number is given an image and those images and words are used in the story.  Here's one of my favorites:

 

"One evening there was a party for a queen at a big hotel.  The hotel had revolving doors.  When the queen got to the hotel, she was amazed to see the revolving doors.  She had never seen doors like those before.  She pushed the doors and went around and around because it was so much fun.  Soon she became dizzy and felt sick.  She had become a sick queen."

 

The greatest thing about this is that it's completly FREE!  Get your own copy right here.

 

Animal Teeth!

I was so excited to try this activity that was created by Yolanda Arnold over at Oceans of First Grade Fun. 

 

 I had recently gotten a copy of "What If You Had Animal Teeth" from my Scholastic book order and then came across Ms. Arnold's post.  I thought this would be a great project to do in our final days of school. (Only 3 more days for us!!!!!!)

 

My kids had so much fun doing this activity and their projects came out AWESOME!

Here is a Vampire Bat and Rattlesnake.

Here is a Beaver and a Crocodile.

This is certainly going to become a regular project in my classroom!

 

~Stacy