Math Cootie Catchers

I have always hated Cootie Catchers, but my students love them.  A Cootie Catcher is a folded paper toy, which originally was intended to be a fortune teller, but we use them to practice math. They make a great interactive tool that we use to practice place value, rounding, basic facts, and most recently fractions.

I found this great book, Math Cootie Catchers, 20 Standards Based Cootie Catchers,  published by Creative Teaching Press.  It includes step by step directions on how to fold them.  It has Cootie Catchers to practice number and operations, fractions and decimals, algebraic concepts, geometry, time, money, and measurement.

You don't have to have a book to make Cootie Catchers.  Here is a great link that I found on Pinterest for making your own. It's on the I (Heart) Teaching blog.

If you need a refresher course on how to fold them, check out this video.

Creative Teaching has cootie catchers for other subjects and grade levels. You can check them out here on the Creative Teaching Website.

Favorite Geometry Activities, and I Found Them on Pinterest

Whatever would I do without Pinterest?  It is such a great resource, as well as a great place to organize information.  That is never more true than it is with our Geometry unit.  We do not have an up-to-date math book that reflects the Common Core, so I am constantly looking for resources to utilize when teaching a unit.  I have found so many wonderful ideas on Pinterest, including the one above.

Right before winter vacation my math groups reviewed lines, angles, plain figures and geometric solids using marshmallows, toothpicks and pretzels. Needless to say, the kids loved it, and they got to eat their math when they were done.  It was the first day that kids would rather be in my math small group than working with the iPads. I found the idea here.  We discovered that the toothpicks worked a lot better than the pretzel sticks, but they are not as tasty.

Another idea I found was this art activity for symmetry.  It was also a good opportunity to talk about how to hold the ruler to draw a straight line, as well as using it for measurement.  I find that fourth graders do not always know how to do this well.  You can see the original idea here.

There is so much new vocabulary connected with Geometry, so anchor charts are very useful.  I also have my students create foldables to keep in their math notebooks.  I have found many great ideas for both on Pinterest.  I created a Geometry board on Pinterest, which makes it easy for me to share these resources with my colleagues.  All I have to do is send them the link to my board.  Here is a link to my Geometry Board.



 We started back to school on Thursday, and now we are working on area and perimeter.  No matter how much we practice, the kids still get confused about which formula they need to use.  This video has a catchy tune that helps them keep it straight.

Next week we will get another chance to eat our math, when we use Cheese Its for area and perimeter. Another clever idea that I found on Pinterest!

Is It Symmetrical?

We are working on symmetry.  We had one of those moments that I had to change my lesson plans on the spur of the moment.  I had my small groups work with a partner to create a design with geo blocks.  The design had to have at least one line of symmetry.  I photographed the designs they created.  Later I showed the designs to the rest of the class.  We had to determine whether the design was in fact symmetrical.  Students used a yard stick to show where the line of symmetry was.

This lesson turned out to be a home run.  It was a quick and easy lesson.  The kids loved doing it and they were excited to see their designs on the screen and to have them used in a lesson for the whole class.. 

Now we are following up with a lesson I found on Pinterest.  Students are using rulers and other drawing tools to create a symmetrical design.  Here is the link to the original post on the blog Art Lessons for Kids.

Skittles Fraction Challenge

We had a lot of fun today finding fractions of sets using Skittles.  I found a great free download on Teachers Pay Teachers for this Skittles Fraction Challenge.  It was a great way to reinforce skills we had been working on, and afterwards, the kids got to eat their math.

Fraction Bingo

We started working on fractions this week.  Once again I turned to my friend, Pinterest, for ideas.  I am gathering resources on this board, Fractions.  I liked the idea of creating a Fraction Bingo game, and I found this post from Primarily Speaking. Since my kids are older I decided to create a game that gave them more choices.

I created a board with figures divided into fractional parts.

They determined what fraction of the figure to color.  They cut out each square and glued it into a square on the BINGO board.  This way each student had a different board.

In order to make the game fair, I labeled a craft stick for each letter of the word Bingo.  

I also wrote each possible fraction on a square of cardstock.  Then I placed the sticks and fraction cards inside an empty oatmeal container.

It was easy to reach my hand in and pull out a stick and a fraction to call out.  I recorded the fraction called on a sheet of paper, so we could check accuracy.

Finally we tested the game by playing it.  The class gave me feedback as to what worked and what didn't.  Next time I will pull out all the fifths and sevenths, since I didn't have any on the game boards.

As we played, I realized that we can use this game again next week as we learn about equivalent fractions.  It will be easy to cover not only the fraction called, but equivalent fractions as well.

If you are interested in trying this game here is the Blank Fraction Board  and
here are the Fraction Bingo Pieces.  Please let me know if you have any difficulty accessing these.