Teaching Intercession and Spring Break!!!

We started working on number collection boxes right before Spring Break. Last year, I worked and worked with my firsties and some of them never did "get" it. This year, i don't think I really did anything differently, but most of the firsties seemed to grasp the concept a little better. I made one and explained it as I went, we made one together and then I gave them a piece of paper to make one by themselves. I was kind of dreading looking at the pages, but I was pleasantly surprised, most of them did a pretty good job. The next day we looked at some of them and then I put them into groups of threes. I thought that the ones that were struggling might understand it better coming form a classmate. I gave each group some dice to get their number and a piece of poster board. I told them that all of the groups that worked together would be able to use markers to finish their poster. That did the trick, they all  were working nicely, well I did have one that did have a bit of a struggle.

Here are a couple of the finished products.

The pink and purple circle WAS a clock showing 5:00 before someone got a little color happy with the markers. ;P

One of the boys in this group asked me if he could put the 11th month. :D

Last week , I was technically on Spring Break, but our district offers a full week of intercession for students are struggling. I was thrilled that I got to invite some of my students this time. We worked on number collection boxes a little more, but this time we glued "stuff" on to make our collections. Here is a picture of one, I forgot to take a picture of some of the better ones.

I think the doily is supposed to be a clock. lol

Here are a few things we did to introduce fact families to them. I thought it would benefit them to get a step ahead of the class.

We also worked on reading words cvc words and then add  Magic E.

Open the flap to find the magic E.

We worked on words families.

I used several pieces of construction paper for these. I folded them in half  and stapled them together to make a word family book.