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Category: Activities

Teaching Polygons Using Rubber Bands

Teaching Polygons Using Rubber Bands

Here’s a super easy and fun way to reinforce attributes of polygons. Using a rubber band that is not too small or thick, students create shapes using their fingers. It’s a great multi-sensory activity. Ideas: -show me a triangle -show me a triangle with one obtuse angle -show me an iscoceles triangle -show me a quadrilateral -show me a trapezoid -etc. Shapes larger than a quadrilateral (4 sides) are more difficult to make. Students can partner up to make pentagons…

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Sticker Addition

Sticker Addition

Why not empower kids to create their own addition problems to solve? They love it! Here’s an activity I do with kindergartners and first graders. An easy way to adapt the lesson for beginning of the school year kindergartners is to have them simply place stickers (less than 10) and write the total.

The Artistic Side of Math – Tessellations

The Artistic Side of Math – Tessellations

I love M.C. Escher! I have a whole book on his work and love to share it with my students when we’re studying angle measurement. That’s because we’re going to tie math and art together through modifying polygons similar to how M.C. Escher did it in some of his paintings. It’s all about tessellating shapes and angles. Using pattern blocks, I show students how shapes tessellate. See photo below. Then, I have students determine the angle measurement of each of…

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Math Around Us: Parallel Lines

Math Around Us: Parallel Lines

One of the best ways to teach students geometry vocabulary is to simply look around our environment. For example, if you want students to understand parallel lines, pair them up and hand them an individual white board and take a stroll around the school. Have them write down all the parallel lines they see. Here are two examples of parallel lines in our environment. Check out all the parallel lines in the door, the windows, the bookshelf, even the light…

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Plotting Ordered Pairs in First Grade!

Plotting Ordered Pairs in First Grade!

This is a super fun activity I did in first grade. I glued a magnet on to a plastic fly my kids had in their insect collection. Then I read the story The Fly on the Ceiling to a group of first graders. I used my plastic fly to plot the points on the grid as I read the story. But the best part was when I had students create points for each other to plot. They absolutely LOVED that!