Mystery Pictures

I want to share with you one of my favorite activities that I have incorporated into my classroom. Mystery Pictures!! But not just any mystery pictures....addition and subtraction mystery pictures!! I had used the mystery pictures in the past where students color in the number that is given at the top. But when I was teaching end of the year kindergartners and first graders, I knew they needed a little bit more of a challenge. So I took it upon myself to create my own mystery pictures. I even made multiplication ones for those students in higher grades! My goal is to have mystery pictures, in every operation, for all major holidays, seasons, etc. That is one of my big summer projects.

Here are all of the ones I have created thus far. And the best part is....these are all on SALE through Friday, June 19!! Grab them while you can!

And my first of many subtraction packets:

Click on any of the pictures to take you to my TPT store!

And don't forget this FREEBIE which is a great example of what these products are like!

Michelle

Markers and Dice

It comes as no surprise to me that my students love to write with dry-erase markers. Everyone knows this, and this is why I am constantly needing to buy more. What I didn't realize is that allowing them to write with these markers makes any type of learning more fun. One day, I decided to let the kids DRAW ON THE TABLE. And you're thinking WHAT?! How can they do that? Well, it's actually no big deal. The marker wipes right off and then, just to clean it, I use a Clorox wipe at the end of the day and it's ready for the next day. So one day I told my students, "Go ahead, it's ok. Write this problem on the table and solve it." And they LOVED it. And kept asking for more. What were they doing? Double-digit addition problems. That's it. Now, I love adding and if you give me a problem, I want to solve it right away. But they cannot get enough! It's almost to the point where they don't want to do anything else during math time. They try to finish as fast as they can so they can draw on the table or the board. To make this activity even more exciting and independent, I found these dice:

These are great dice because they have the place value right on them. The numbers go up to 9, not just up to 6 like regular dice, which is great when you want students to practice with carrying. So now I just give the students the tens and the ones dice, a marker, and some whiteboard space, and they are satisfied for the rest of math class. And I told them that if they kept getting correct answers, I would even add the Hundreds die! Needless to say, they worked extra hard after that to get that third die. I am so proud of how quickly they learned double and triple-digit addition and it pleases me even more that they enjoy it. Hopefully, by the end of the year we will be using the Thousands die!

Do you have any fun strategies for teaching addition? I would love to hear your ideas!

Michelle