Happy Halloween! Math Stations this Week!

Happy Halloween! We've been VERY busy this week with Halloween themed fun, but I've been taking pictures of everything to catch back up when I could! I wanted to give you all a little peek at my math stations this week. My students absolutely loved them!

1. Ghostly Ten Frames
Students matched up the puzzle pieces to each ten frame to show how many more dots they needed to make 10! This one was a bit tricky for them at first, but I had them first order each ghost card 1-10, and that helped them keep track to fill out the recording sheet correctly.

2. A Pumpkin Patch of Shapes
Students sorted pumpkin shape cards by 2D/3D shape and then sorted the pictures in their own pumpkin patch!

3. Trick-or-Treat Candy Count
They counted the candy cards and sorted them in each trick-or-treat bag by number!

4. Creepy Counting On
Students used the counting on mats to tell what 3 numbers came next after a given number by sorting the number cards that matched! And of course I just noticed that this was the ONLY mat that this kiddo didn't have in the right order... but she wrote it down correctly on her recording sheet! Oops! Well, it's the result that matters, ha... ;)

We did one math station a day, which is why we only had 4! We have early release on Mondays, so we don't do any stations on that day.

Since each station took different lengths of time to complete, I set up 4 fast finisher activities for them to do if they finished early. To avoid everyone rushing to the same activity, I assigned a crayon to each bucket that matched the table color they were at. That way, only the students at blue table could do the blue bucket activity, red table could only do the activity in the red bucket, and so forth. Each day I switch the crayon so that every student gets to do each fast finisher activity at least once.

Here are the details on our fast finisher buckets! The kids seriously could not get over these. They were so excited to get to these that they got straight to good hard work on their centers!

Trick-or-Treat Roll and Cover {I forget who made this, if you know, tell me and I'll give them credit!! It was a great freebie!}

Caught in the Web Spider Ten Frame Match {Freebie from Mrs. Wills Kindergarten!}

Halloween Roll and Color {Freebie from The Moffatt Girls}

Spidery Roll and Cover {From my Trick-or-Treat! Math is Sweet! Math Stations}

If you like what you see with these math stations, be sure to check them out in my Trick-or-Treat! Math is Sweet! pack in my TPT store by clicking on the picture below! I know Halloween is over now, but you can plan ahead for next year!

One more day to go in this super crazy week! And I have my formal observation tomorrow... the day after Halloween! Ahhh! Hope my kids aren't too wild from all the candy! 

What we're up to this week: Literacy Centers edition with a FREEBIE!

Woah, two updates in one week! This is unheard of! I am on a roll, let me tell you. :) I'm really trying to be more dedicated at updating when I have the time and I really want to start sharing more freebies with you all! I posted a farm-themed rhyming picture sort in my last post if you want to go download.

Today, I thought I'd share a little bit about the literacy centers my students are participating in this week.  My kids always love sentence stem activities, so I try and put some of those in my centers whenever I can. It's a great way for the kids to practice their fluency skills, sight words, and reading and tracking print. And since we always make a response sheet for these activities, they get a little writing in, too! Since we are working on our farm theme at the moment, the sentence stem for this week is "A ____________ lives on the farm." I put the sentence stem at the top of the pocket chart and then I included words and pictures of various farm animals. One student chooses a word, another student holds the pointer, and they all choral read together. After each sentence is made and read, they go back to their response sheet to fill out the sentence they created; then once everyone has completed that, they switch jobs and create a new sentence. Don't mind my awful illustrations... ha!

Example of the response sheet:

Our latest word family had words ending in -x, so I put together a little activity sheet called "X Marks the Spot". Using a bingo dobber, the students have to find all the words ending in X. The second half of the sheet, called "Read and Illustrate", has the students do just that! They have to read the second and draw a picture to show meaning. Of course each sentence has words ending in X as well!

Click the picture below to download this activity for FREE! {Note: This is made on 11x17 paper!}

Our third station of the week is an ending sound picture sort. My kids can identify beginning sounds like the back of their hand, but sometimes get tripped up on identifying the ending sounds! I made this little picture sort to help them practice and they have done wonderfully so far! On my picture sorts, I always like to have them write the word to match the picture to work on their phonemic awareness and decoding skills. This friend is really strong in his "sound-it-out" skills. :)

The rest of my centers include a farm book craftivity (pictures to come when it is all complete) and two centers that remain the same EVERY week - computers and listening center.

This year, more than ever, my students seem to complete their work in record time and are constantly asking me, "What can I do now that I'm done?" To try and alleviate hearing it 1230275 times a day, I try to include some fast finisher activities that they can choose once they are done. The four fast finishers I'm using this week are:

1. Blast Off! Sight word dice game (Made by the wonderful Cara Carroll!)

2. Sight Word Sentence white board activities (From Lakeshore)

3. Scholastic "Let's Find Out!" Magazine (This week, a belated Dr. Seuss edition!)

4. "Sounds in the Clouds" CVC beginning and ending word building (Which can be found in my weather unit on TPT... click here to check it out: Oh the Weather Outside... {Weather Activities for Math, Literacy, and More!})

My students look forward to centers so much and literally cheer when I tell them it's time for them to begin! It's one of my favorite times of the day!