Counting Money and a freebie

Last week we started our money chapter in math. This concept the kids have such a hard time with! They are very excited to start the chapter, however once we start counting the coins theirs and my frustration level raises! This year I've taken it very SLOWLY in hopes for them to grasp it better, and by Friday's math lesson I would say probably 13 of my 16 munchkins can count money pretty good.  Now lets hope they don't forget it over the weekend :).

I started the week off by doing a foldable which included the coins name, the value, a pictue, a poem, and the way we write each coin. That foldable has saved me this week! When they would look at me and say I forgot how much a dime is worth, I would just direct them to their foldable and they were able to find out their answer! Then when we started counting the money I saw the idea on Pinterest to use a 100's chart, why I never thought of that I  don't know but it has worked wonderful.  Some of my students are already pulling away from using the 100's chart which makes my heart happy!

So next week for math centers my kiddos will be using these money sticks to practice counting a group of coins.  I found them on Pinterest so last night I  created 20 of them to stick in my centers! I think the kids will enjoying using them and give them lots of practice with it too!

Here was my inspiration: 

Which you can read about on Hope's blog 2nd Grade Shenanigans
 If you haven't been to Hope's blog you must check it out, she has some wonderful ideas to share!

 And here are my money sticks! I think they turned out cute.

 

And an up-close picture of one. 

 

I numbered them 1-20 and made an easy recording sheet for them so I can check them quickly.  I will give fair warning: this recording sheet is nothing fancy but it will get the job done :). 

money sticks recording sheet 

If you have any great ideas or tricks on how you teach money I would love to hear them!! 

Enjoy your weekend!

New Math Chapter

Monday, Monday, Monday! It was quite a busy Monday for us and we got lots and lots done today! I love when we have a very productive day at school and I don' feel like a lot of time was wasted.

Today for math we started our new chapter and it is geometry and patterns! I'm so glad to be done with the last 2 chapters of measurement!! The 1st one was on measuring length, which isn't too bad it just gets a little boring for me. But the 2nd one was measuring volume and capacity!! The kids had such a hard time with it and the lessons were not that great! **note to self I need to find better activities for these 2 chapters over the summer for next year :)** Not to mention the test that they have to take is all with really BAD pictures so it made it even harder!

Ok, off that little rant, and onto what I did today. The kids had to look at pictures and see how many sides and vertices the following shapes had: square, rectangle, triangle, and a circle. And then they had to be able to write a math sentence if there were multiple objects. For the most part my kids seemed to pick up the concept pretty easy. We did this quick foldable so the students had an easy to use reference guide in-case they forgot!

Nothing fancy but it did the trick and helped the kiddos!

Outside


On the inside

Thanks for taking the time to read this!