Shape Concentration

Do you remember the post where I talked about teaching shapes with the shape book?  You can refresh your mind here.  Heather and I teach our weekly skill during our guided math groups.  However, when students are rotating through their independent math stations, we have them review skills from the week before.  So the week following our shapes lessons, we needed some stations that allowed the students to practice what they had learned the week before and be able to work independently.  For our math game station, I made a shape concentration game that would let the students identify the shapes as well as use attributes to identify them.  I unfortunately did not snap any pictures of my students using this game (I was too busy teaching this week's guided math lessons on partitioning circles and rectangles into rows and columns).  You can pick up your own copy by following my link to my TPT store on the side of the blog, or by clicking the picture below.

On an unrelated note, Heather and I didn't have school on Friday due to "snow".  To put it in perspective to understand just how little snow we had, my 6 year old woke up on Friday morning and asked why we weren't going to school.  I explained that we had a snow day.  When she looked outside, she said "but Mommy, that is just frost!"  EXACTLY!

So, we got ourselves a day off, which seems like a great thing since we don't have school on Monday or Tuesday this coming week giving our students a 5 day weekend.  However, now thanks to our "frost day" we will now be in school on Saturday morning!!  BOO!!!!!  So we have been busy enjoying our 5 day weekend since next weekend will only be a 1 day weekend.

Happy Shape Matching!

Shapes, Shapes, and More Shapes

Hello friends!  Have you ever had one of those days that you got out of bed and within the first 30 minutes awake, you wanted to climb back into bed and claim a do-over?  Well, that sadly was me this morning.  I had one of the most terrible mornings I have ever had in a long time.  I cried to school the entire way and began my morning at school at 6:30 already having cried off my make up and a red and puffy face.  Knowing me as well as she does, Heather immediately knew something was up.  I spent about 45 minutes in my classroom quietly trying to get myself back together.  I was very worried about the way my day would continue to go.  I am one of those people that has to have everything go "just right" or my day will fall apart.  I prayed that my morning would not dictate the rest of my day and I am pleased to tell you that it in fact did NOT dictate my day!!!  My class had a great day and it was one that I was able to look back on and think, "wow, I was good today!"  Nothing like tooting your own horn, right!?!  Any who, I thought I'd snap a quick picture and let you know what we have been working on in our second grade rooms.  We have just finished up a horrible, mind numbing, torturous,  lovely unit on addition and subtraction with regrouping.  Notice our LONG silence and break from blogging.  You can thank regrouping.  I don't know what it was but this blew their minds!!!!!  There was little that was good to share so hence our sabbatical.  So after that fun little unit, we have moved into something more fun and enjoyable...GEOMETRY!  We began by building our common shapes with Popsicle sticks and began filling out a shape books.  We have discovered that our kids are good at shape identification but lack the ability to rationalize why they know the shape based on attributes.  We have them create these shape books and keep them for reference as they work.

You can pick up your own copy of this shape book here.  Or by clicking on the picture below.  

  

Happy Shapes to you!!