Five Minute Math and Reading Activities

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great long weekend, and a great Thanksgiving if you celebrate it!
I was lucky enough to have the entire week off. I made good use of it by putting together a bunch of reading and math activities that I can do with Toko and whatever kids end up in my small group. Each of these games is meant to take about five minutes. Not only will I use them when I take Toko and other kids out in the hallway to work on skills, but if I ever do get started on a reading group, I can use these games as incentives for good behavior and hard work. Want to see what I made?

This is a "Clank Can" for practicing counting to one hundred. Toko can count to about thirty, but when he gets to the twenties he pronounces them, "Twenty-twenty-one, twenty-twenty-two..." He and a lot of the other kids also have trouble recognizing and naming double digit numbers. For instance if I show them the number 43, they may call it forty, fourteen, thirteen, thirty-four, or some completely random number that I am never sure how they come up with. With this game, players close their eyes, draw a chip (poker chips that I labeled with numbers) from the bag, and look at it. If they can name it they get to drop it through the slot in the can, making a lovely "clank" noise. If they can't name it, they put it aside to try again later. Players can also divide up the chips and drop them into the can in order, while counting to one hundred together. They can also work together to put the chips in the right order on a table or floor, and then clean up by dropping them all noisily into the can!

Next we have Tower Of Power, which I found on Pinterest somewhere. Each cup has a sight word written on the bottom. Players take the first cup from the stack and turn it over. If they can read the word, they get to add it to their tower. The idea is to build your tower as big as you can! You can play competitively by building two towers and trying to get the tallest one, or you can play as a team by working together to build one huge tower. (Most people who make this game store it in a Pringles can, but I haven't finished the Pringles yet, so I'm storing it in a plastic bag for now.) My favorite thing about this is that you can keep on adding words as kids get better. If Toko becomes great at reading these site words, I will add more advanced words and mix them in, making even taller towersr possible!

This is simply a dry erase workbook. I always find great workbooks at Dollar Tree, but I hate to use them because then they're all gone, and because sometimes kids just whip through them and circle all the wrong answers, defeating the purpose. So I went through all my workbooks and tore out the pages I thought would be best for Toko and the others. I slipped the pages into sheet protectors, and put them in a binder. Kids always love doing anything at all with dry erase markers, so I'm hoping that will put a fun spin on ordinary workbook pages! And, if a kid makes a lot of mistakes, I can reteach the skills, and then wipe off the page and have him try again!

This one is really simple. I made it especially for Toko because he loves sports. It is a football field (in case you can't tell from my drawing skills.) You start on the very first line at either end of the board. You take a site word card (not shown in the picture) and try to read it. For every word you read correctly, you get to move up a line. When you get all the way to the last line on the other end, you score a touch down! It can be played by one kid, or by two people starting from opposite sides of the board.

Next is a fishing game! I worked very hard at coloring each fish, while watching DVRed episodes of "Parenthood" and "New Girl" with my mom. Each fish has a site word on it. You may be able to see the ever-so-crafty fishing poles I rigged up from craft sticks, string, and round refrigerator magnets I found at the DollarTree! I bet you can guess how the game is played! (Each fish has a brass tack attached to him.)

I didn't really make this one, so much as I took something I already owned and shoved it into a new bag. I have the Busy Bugs Learning Set leftover from when I was a caregiver for preschoolers. The object of the game is to match the rubber bugs to the pictures of bugs. Most of the cards in the set are too easy for Toko (he does know his colors and is able to match things to pictures) but there are also some cards that require you to finish a pattern. I pulled those cards out and put them in a bag with the bugs. Kids can also create their own patterns. Eventually I may add my own task cards with more complicated patterns to recreate!

Another super simple game. In the tub are alphabet beads that I had left over from the Alphabet Discovery Bottle I made during student teaching. All you do is take a site word card, find the correct letters, and string them onto the pipe cleaner. You can separate each word by a star bead or a plain bead, and see how many beads can fit on the pipe cleaner. Kids could even keep the pipe cleaners and wear them as bracelets, which would help them learn their site words even more thoroughly!

This one isn't really a game on its own, but it can be used along with any games that require dice. I hate playing dice games with kids because they either arrange the dice the way they want them and then toss them ever-so-gently onto the table, or they get out of control and whip their dice across the room. I had some of those little plastic bubbles that you get out of the machine at the bowling alley, with little rings and stuff in them. So I just put two dice in one of those. Now the kids just have to shake the bubble, set it down, and see where the dice landed!


I have even more activities in the works, and I'll probably post them later in the week as I finish them. Here is a sneak peak at one of them that is not quite finished...

Have a great week, everyone! 

A Visit From Miss Read

Hi everyone! I am now into my second week of being all graduated up with no where to go! I've been spending most of my time searching for jobs and filling out applications, both for the summer and for this fall. I think I've filled out about 35 applications! And its only the middle of May! Every single day I log onto k12jobspot.com to see whats available in my area. There is usually at least one opening that fits my qualifications. I hope that's a good sign!


When I left Tree Elementary, I promised the students that I would come back and visit them at least a couple times before school ended. Last week, I had emailed Mrs. Eagle to ask when would be a good time to come visit, and she suggested Thursday at 2:00. So, today I showed up at the school at 2:00... and the kids went wild! As soon as I walked through the classroom door, a bunch of them came up and hugged me, and everyone was yelling, "Miss Read! Miss Read! Miss Read!" Starling and Rosella demanded to know where my dogs and cat were. When I told them my pets were at home, Starling asked, "They're sick today?" (Of course, because why else wouldn't my dogs and cat be at school with me! LOL!) Jay was tapping me frantically on the arm to ask me what kind of makeup the members of the band Kiss wear, and why they wear makeup when they're all men. Martin was shimmying across the room, showing me his new dance moves. Triller was just standing there grinning at me. Towhee was informing me that I was five minutes late. Kite was hugging me from behind in an attack bear hug, and Oriole was asking if I had started teaching my own class yet! And then, they all started handing me thank-you cards they had made for the books I had given them on the last day of school! It was so noisy, and everyone was talking, and  I was trying to answer everyone at once! 


Finally Mrs. Eagle settled them down a little by telling them we could make ice cream sundaes. After that, they had free time. So I got to watch Starling play with the iPad, and I got to answer 50,000,000,000,000,000 more questions from Jay about vampires and Kiss and baseball. 


I also got to play kind of a cool game with Kite and Towhee! The kids learned this game during the school's Multicultural Week, which was the week after I left. This game is an adaptation of a game called Sapo, which is popular in Peru. If you follow the link, you can see what the real game is supposed to look like. But in our class, the kids were playing a home made version. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture, and I can't find a picture of anything similar online. But I can probably describe it to you! 


All you need is a muffin tin, some small pieces of paper or labels, and some pennies. However many compartments your muffin tin has, you should number that many pieces of paper. For instance, we had a 12-cup muffin tin, we had 12 pieces of paper, numbered 1 through 12. Put one number in each compartment. Set the muffin tin on a desk or table that is about waist high. 


Now, the players take turns tossing pennies at the muffin tin! You will have to decide for yourself how many pennies you'll use for each turn, and how far away to stand. When we played, the kids got ten pennies each turn, and they stood about six feet back from the muffin tin. 


When it is your turn, you take all of the pennies, and you stand wherever your group has decided will be the standing spot. And all you do is, toss the pennies at the muffin tin! You can toss all of the pennies at once, a few at a time, or just one at a time. When you've tossed all of your pennies, you look into the muffin tin to see where they landed. Add up the numbers of the tins the pennies landed in. There's your first score! This is actually harder than it looks. The pennies don't necessarily go anywhere near the numbered compartments. The kids have been playing it every day, and are getting very good at it. But, my first time playing, I scored two. TWO! Only one of my pennies landed in a compartment! 


You can keep playing as long as you want, letting each person's score get higher and higher until you have to stop playing. If you play like that, the person with the highest score is the winner. Or you can decide ahead of time on a goal score, like 100, and the first person who reaches it is the winner. 


I like this game a lot because it combines hand-eye coordination, math, and fun. I'm definitely going to remember it! 


I was kind of sad to leave again at the end of the day. The kids kept asking me if I'd be back tomorrow. Some of them thought I was just back, for good! I had to tell them no, but I promised I'd visit them again. It was so weird going back, as a visitor! I'm glad I did though... I never had such a warm welcome in all my life!