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!