Engaging Math Lessons!

What!?!
Yep…I’ve done it TWO days in a row. Pat on the back for me!
I kept reading about all of these “snowball fights” and it sounded like such a fun idea but I put my own twist on it. 
For the CC standard for Kindergarten “Compose numbers with 10 and some ones…”
Here’s the activity.
Snowball fight with base ten blocks
You are going to need 30 or more 1/4 sheets of white paper with numbers 11-20 written on them by the teacher (you can make the numbers higher to differentiate).
Base Ten Blocks for each table or enough for each student. 
*I just used tens and ones but as their number sense develops, I am going to add in the 100 blocks. 
I gave each student a piece of paper and we practiced first. I had them look at their number and build their number with their base ten blocks. This gave me an idea if they compose the number. When I said “snowball fight” they crumpled up the paper and sent them flying. Amazingly enough, nobody cried or got nailed in the face! Hooray! 
When I turned off the lights, they had to pick up the nearest “snowball” and go back to their seats to compose the number. 
We did this for a couple of rounds and the kids LOVED it! Thank you to the bloggers out there for the inspiration on the “snowball” fight. I am going to think of a sight word game here soon 🙂
Ok…like I said. I had two ideas so here is the second one. Again, inspired from someone else but with a Kindergarten twist! 
This activity covers the standard of “Describe measurable attributes of objects”.
Foot measuring comparison
Each student will need a set of “feet”. 
I had my TA (who is awesome) use our die cut machine to cut out actual footprints. 
She did a basketball sized foot, a kid sized foot and a baby sized foot. 
We put them on different colored paper to differentiate what size was what but it was such a drastic difference it doesn’t matter if you do colors! 
We reviewed the concept of length and the students worked in pairs to measure 3 different things in the room of their choice. 
Here is the recording page that they put in their clipboard. I would say the hardest thing about this activity is that students have a hard time with the concept of “working together”. They just want to do it themselves so that I would really take the time to do a lot of modeling and chatting about what it means to work together. 
Click on the image to get it for free 🙂
Math has never been my strong point and I am really trying to love it and embrace it just as much as I do literacy! 
Let me know if you do it with your kiddos and how it goes…it was tons of fun :0)