I am beyond thankful that Thanksgiving is just around the corner. It has been a busy fun filled year in my room this year with lots of err…challenges? (Am I allowed to say that. *cringe*) We have all had those years where are students require some extra help. I have fallen into one of those years. I love my kids, they are sweet and smart. However, my students are also in need of a lot of guidance this year. That being said, I have had to restructure my every day teaching to provide them with very structured time and less independent or small group collaboration time. They don’t have the ability to self pace yet. We are a work in progress. lol
Okay, so off my rant about my sweet kiddos and back to this post. I decided to take a break from some of our more structured and techbook type work to have some fun this week on the days that our schedule was a bit crazy. This past weekend I let my kindergarten teacher show (I miss her…I loved teaching Kinder…though third has its perks too…moving on…) and I came up with some activities that I found fitting for my kids while being crafty and giving them some time to be kids again. I am going to share two of those activities below.
The first activity we did was Daryl the Division Turkey. I would be remiss if I did not tell you Daryl takes some time and effort. However, the pay off is well worth it. Here is what he looks like before I continue…
My students first solved problems on their turkey. They used the blank, bottom part of the feathers to show their work (T-chart or groups) and then they put the answer in the number sentence at the top of the feather. Many of my kids chose to show the work on the back because they didn’t want their turkey to be “messed up”. I did not think my kids would enjoy coloring as much as they did, but man they took their time and really got into it.
So, after we solved, cut, colored and glued our turkeys. (This was day one.) On day two we looked at the parts of a division word problem. I showed them the three parts in some examples. (Sentence 1 has the total, sentence 2 has the groups or parts you are splitting the problem into. aka the divisor and sentence three asks how many will be in each group.) Now of course there are other ways to do these too, but I wanted them to get the basic understanding of the problems. They created to Thanksgiving themed problems on notebook paper. I helped them quickly edit because of spelling and some basic grammar my students are still struggling with.
After students had their edited copy they put the final draft in a foldable (below). When we were all finished we took our papers, we walked to music and we paired up and solved when the music stopped. Students did this two times.
My goal was to drive home the difference in a division word problem and a multiplication word problem. My students learned through writing the problems out that they have to have a total number, they aren’t looking for the total number. Since then, we have had very few confusions between the two.
Here is the link to Daryl the Division Turkey
Activity 2: Native American headband
Activity 2 is much easier than Daryl. It is multiplication based. Students created this Native American headband, known as the Multiplication Chief headband to wear to Thanksgiving feast at school.
The activity is simple:
Solve all the multiplication problems (roughly 60 or you could give them one page of feathers if time is short. They then color and cut. You can have them glue the feathers or for the sake of time I stapled them to the headband.
You will need manila paper, sentence strip or adding machine tape to add to the headband front to make it long enough to go around their heads.
Get this activity here! Its free for a limited time!
Hope you enjoy and have a blessed Thanksgiving!
