Leprechauns and all that fun stuff!

What a fun busy weekend!  My kids spent the last two days trying to find "evidence" of Leprechauns in our house.  I spent the last two days trying to find our house!  My husband worked all weekend, so it became the perfect time to get out warmer weather clothes and go through the kid's rooms and put toys we don't play with anymore into the garage sale bins.  It feels so good to purge, but wow, how do we end up with all this stuff!  and the amount of Happy Meal toys..wowza...  I'm thinkin we need a whole lot more of home cookin!  I also found some time to put the finishing touches on my next Packet...  I am in the process of gathering Math Center activities that I have been making for the new Common Core Standards this year.  I have to say I am LOVING Common Core so far!  We have so much more time to work on concepts and I am impressed with how well the students understand so much more deeply---  and all of them are getting it because we spend so much more time on them in centers.    This is how I run my math centers:

3 times a week I have about an hour (give or take) and I try to get in 4 fifteen minute centers. 

Center 1: they get to go on computers.  I make them do Xtra Math first and then they can do ABCya.com or Kid's College.  Xtra Math is great for math fluency, takes about 5 min after rhe initial 20 min testing, gives me information about what they are acomplishing, and (THE BEST PART!)  it is FREE!  Gotta love it!  I also signed my own kindergartener up to do this at home.  It is great because I can send home their pin numbers and they can work at home.  I get to see both home and school scores!  LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!
Center 2: Some kind of math fluency game.  It is either on the whiteboard or a small group work.  I have about 10 I use all year and just change up the facts.  It really helps with managing the center. 
Center 3: a game or activity that goes with the main concept I am working with.  Sometimes I sit with the group and help, sometimes I pull students from another center to remediate or get in some extentions and sometimes I test students one on one for our district assessments that require it.
Center 4:  This one is the wild card...  sometimes I give the students the manipulatives we will be using for the next concept and let them play however they want with them.  Sometimes you just have to use the pattern blocks to make a wall or a really long snake out of the unifix cubes!  I find that giving my students "play" time with the manipulatives, the novelty is gone when it comes time to use them and they say on task better.  Sometimes I will put out something and let them make their own explorations...  a scale and a bunch of objects, that kind of thing...  then I make them draw and write about what they did.  I have a few listening centers I have made that go with math skills and this would be the center for doing that as well.  It is kind of the "whatever I need it to be'" center.

That being said,  here is my first bunch of activities I would use in Center 3...

I just uploaded it into my Teachers Pay Teachers Store.  You can download it here!

The other project I have been working on is finishing up the Hunger Games Trilogy!  I decided that I have been out of the loop for too many of these big crazes and I was ready to jump in.  and YUCK!  I cannot even believe how horrible the premise is for these books!  Yet, I cannot put them down!!!  I just can't wait to see what will happen next!  Not exactly the "feel good" happy, inspiring books I am usually drawn to, that is for sure.  I read the 1st one in a day, the 2nd last night and finished it today and I am about 60 pages into the next!  I do read fast...  so off to learn more about the MOCKINGJAY!!!  

Have a great week!

Julie