Winter Math Center FREEBIE!

Hi Friends! It's Jeannine from Creative Lesson Cafe!

I'm so happy to be joining the awesome bloggers here at Primary Powers once again! Every day, I am just amazed at the wonderful ideas they all share with us. This is THE PLACE for all things primary! 

 It has been a brutally cold and snowy start to 2015 here in Michigan. We are used to it though. There is pretty much no other choice but to embrace winter and try to make the most of it. In the classroom, that means teaching around lots of cold weather themes and I love that! I'm here to share a way for you to bring some snowy fun into your room too with mini-marshmallow snowballs!

We're in the middle of a penguin unit right now so I set out this snowball toss for one of our math stations.

 It's a fun activity for some great math fact practice!

Let me tell you, this is the easiest and QUIETEST activity ever!

 Here's how it works:

Students count out either ten or twenty marshmallows. Then, they put them in a small cup or hold them in their hand to toss. They gently throw them over the mat you see in the photo above. Some marshmallow snowballs will land on the mat and some will be off of the mat. The students count the number on/off and record the pairs and /or write equations on the recording sheet.

In this photo, 6 marshmallows were off the mat (one is on the other side of the mat), so for the subtraction sentence we subtracted 6 from the total. My kiddos like to play it as a game. The first person to fill the table without writing any duplicate facts other than the flip flop of the addends is the winner. 

There are recording sheets for firsties too, using just ten snowballs. For my friends who have to watch their ink, I created a black and white spill mat you can copy on bright paper!  

Before using any food items as math counters, I always let my class eat a few before starting if I can.

 Otherwise, we may find we are practicing combinations to 7 or 13!

 Of course, if you want to modify the activity for other sums, you can eat a few too and just white out the title on the recording sheet! :)

  To bring a little snowball fun into your classroom, you can download this math activity {here}. 

My class loves it and I hope that your kiddos will too!

  Try to stop by Creative Lesson Cafe some time to see more classroom fun for winter themes!

I hope to see you soon!