So the truth is, I am a big kid at heart! Aren’t we all?! Any chance to make something fun or crafty and I am all about it. Spring is no exception for me.
Often times, this is the time of year in third grade when I begin to get worn down. Its all about testing season, raising the rigor as high as possible and keeping our kiddos exposed to word problems. If I can find a way to break up the monotony with other activities, I do. Here are some of my favorite go to activities around Easter time and the beginning of spring.
EGG HUNTS!
Yes, they are normally for younger kids, but who says they have to be?! Add and educational element and you can have a Math Egg Hunt.
WORD PROBLEM HUNT
One way to do this to have a word problem hunt! Students get an answer sheet, similar to that you would see for task cards. Pair your students up and send them on a hunt for word problems. Students find one egg with their partner, answer the question on their sheet, then place the egg where they found it. They then move on to another egg. This will continue until they finish.
As you can see this is a low prep activity. I took word problems from our curriculum, cut them up and placed them in the eggs. Here are the steps I used to make this activity easy and understandable.
- I only had the kids hunt 6 eggs. Since there are 6 egg colors, I placed the same question in each color (for example all pink eggs had question 1, all yellow question 2, all purple questions 3 and so on.)
- We put answers on notebook paper. To do this I had them fold their paper into 6 sections.
- Then I had them label each section with a color instead of a number.
- I instructed students to only find one of each egg color.
Just a tip: Instead of having students hunt all of the eggs at once, send them for one egg, give them time to solve then call them back to their desks when they have finished and put it back. Then send them out for the next egg. Keep going until you have finished all 6 eggs.
5. We then as a class went over the questions and check their answers. I called on students who had answered correctly as I was walking around checking to come and teach it to the class. My students expect this and they work hard at teaching their partners so that they get picked to teach the class. This is a great way to foster their desire to share and use the math thinking skills with peers.
FRACTION HUNT
You can also have a regular honest to goodness hunt. Have students bring in eggs filled with candy. Students hunt eggs finding a specified amount. (I usually have them hunt for 6 eggs each when I do this.) Students then make fractions out of their eggs using the colors of each eggs. For instance 2/6 of the eggs are pink or 1/6 are yellow. To raise the rigor then have students make equivalent fractions from their numbers or they can create a word problem using one of the fractions and then trade and solve the problems with a partner.
“EGGS”it Tickets
Another activity I will do is to use the eggs as an exit ticket. Students grab an egg in the last 5 minutes of class. They pull out the paper in their egg and answer the questions on it. Often times these are just quick drills for multiplication or they are sometimes something a little more difficult such as a word problem.
Hope you enjoyed these activities and have a chance to share some of them with your students this spring! What are some of your favorite spring activities?
