TONS of freebies for Target and Dollar Tree buys!....Holla for a Dolla! Halloween Edition

So I don't know about you, but I constantly pass the cute little games in the Dollar bins at Target and at Dollar Tree that I look at and say, " I could totally use those for my classroom." Then I buy them and don't know where to start!

Well look no further, I have taken tons of items from the Target Dollar Spot and Dollar Tree and turned them into math/literacy (mostly math) games with response sheets!

I'm cleverly calling this.....Holla for a Dolla!

If this is popular/useful, I will continue to make these games for seasons/holidays as they come!

The first item is those cute little erasers from the Target Dollar Spot! Get the following games here!

These guys have endless possibilities...but these are the few ideas that I came up with!

Candy Count: Choose a number card (0-20 provided), and then match that amount of candy corn erasers. A response sheet is included if wanted! 

Franken-Tower: Using your little erasers, have students make a tower as tall as they can without it falling over. Each time the tower falls, count how many erasers were used and record it.

Pumpkin Pick-Up: Play this game like you play jacks. Bounce a ball and pick up pumpkins in the same hand before you catch it. Record how many pumpkins you picked up and then write the two numbers that come next.

The Skeleton or the Pumpkin?: Grab your skeleton and pumpkin erasers. Record how many of each you have and then circle the bigger number. 

Next on my list is the table scatter from Target Dollar Spot! I saw orange pumpkins, red leaves, and brown leaves available, but I only got pumpkins and red leaves.

There are tons of ways to use these cute little counters, and you can get my ideas here!

Grab a Pumpkin and Grab a Leaf: In both of these games, students simply grab a handful of pumpkins/leaves and count how many they grabbed.

Hit the Magic Spot: In this two player game (pumpkins vs. leaves), each player takes their turn rolling 1 dice and covering that many spots on their side. The first person to reach the magic spot with that exact number wins!

Line Em' Up: Choose a leaf card (0-5) or (0-10) depending on your kids needs and fill the ten frame up with that many leaves. Then, fill the rest with pumpkins and create an equation for a combination of 5 or a combination of 10.

 

This table scatter is so fun! You can use it for so much more!

 

 

The next item is the spider rings from Target Dollar Spot! (And spider ice cube trays from the Target Dollar Spot!)

 

 

These guys can be used for EVERYTHING! Spider rings are fantastic :) But you can see my ideas here!

 

Spider Six: Students roll their dice. Then, they grab that many green spiders to match that number for the ice cube tray. They fill the rest up with the purple spiders and make an equation for a combination of 6. They color in the green/purple squares to match the numbers in their equation.

Dead Ringer: Students gently throw a handful of spiders in the air. They count how many landed on their feet (alive) and how many landed on their backs (dead) and make an equation. 

 

Webby Match: Students count the correct amount of spider rings to match the number on the webby card. Numbers 0-20 are included for easy differentiation.

 

These cute spider rings are perfect little counters for pretty much any counting activity you have!

 

Now on to the Dollar Tree purchases! Starting with...Dollar Tree Foam stickers!

 

 
These foam stickers are obviously super fun for art projects and decorating, but they can be used for more academic stuff too! You can get my ideas here!

Sticky Graph: Give students a baggie of stickers for them to sort. Then, create a graph with the stickers. Two graphs are included depending on the size of the stickers.

Scary Match: Give students a baggy of stickers for them to sort. Then, students count how many of each sticker they have and match to the number. For example, 2 witches on 2, 4 spiders on 4, etc.

Make a Pattern: Give students a bag of stickers. Have them choose a pattern card, and then make a pattern using that rule with their stickers.

 

Sticker Story: Give students a sticker. Then, have them write a story about it! (I left it neutral in case you want to use it for any other types of stickers!)

 

 I love how easy it is to use these stickers for other things!

The next item is the Night Creatures from the Dollar Tree! These little flies are a little gross, but my boys especially will like to use them!

You can get my ideas for these creepy crawlies here!

Hide-A-Bug: The students grab a handful of bugs. They count them and then cover a certain amount with a cup. Their goal is to try to figure out what number is on the cup using the other two numbers in their equation.

Shoo Fly: Students CAREFULLY throw a handful of bugs in the air. Then count how many are on their feet (alive) and on their backs (dead). Use these numbers to write an equation.

These were super creepy so I didn't think of too many games for these haha!

The next Dollar Tree item is the Halloween erasers! These puppies are so cute!!

These erasers were perfect for all kinds of activities. Here are my ideas :)

Make A Pattern: Students choose a pattern card and complete the pattern. They could also extend it further.

Grab and Graph: Students grab a handful of erasers. Then, they count and graph it using the graph paper below.

Secret Story: Students grab a "secret eraser." Then, they write a story about the character they see.

I think this is my favorite buy! They are just so cute!

The last item are the Dollar Tree ice cube trays!

These cute little trays are perfect for making equations and counting! These are my ideas!

Crazy Eyes: Students choose a blue eye card. Then, they fill the cube tray with that many blue eyes. Finish filling the tray with the gold eyes. Then, write an equation to create a combination of 5 or 10.

 
Pumpkin Pumpkin: Put the 1-10 pumpkin numbers in the bottom of the ice cube tray. Then students fill the tray with the little pumpkins (from Target Dollar spot) to match the number.

Skelo-teen: Put the 11-20 skeleton numbers in the bottom of the ice cube tray. Then students fill the tray with the little skeletons (from Target Dollar spot) to match the number.

 

These by no means are the only ideas to use these Dollar Tree/Target Dollar Spot finds....but I feel like they are useful! Hopefully you can use them with your kiddos!

 

Have a great Halloween week with your students! Hopefully they aren't too crazy :)

Peek at my Week! 10/7 and Math Station Help!

So my kiddos and I have been in a rut. They have made so much progress, both socially and academically and they are wonderful kiddos, but we cannot get the hang of my math stations routine. If I leave them for a second, they go crazy!

So I think this is one of those times where I have to say, it's not them, it's me! I need to totally change up my math station routine. Anyone (especially kindergarten teachers) have idea that has really worked for them? I am going to focus on how to play games for the next week or so, but am looking for a way to get my kids to work independently/with partners so I can start pulling groups! Any ideas?

Anywho, beyond this little snafu, we are learning about spiders this week! I am going to try and actually post progress and pictures throughout this week. Taking 2 grad school classes and being on school committees in addition to getting ready to move into my new apartment, I feel like the blog is on the back burner. I promise I'll try harder!

Here is a Peek at my Week! Link up with Mrs. Wills Kindergarten and share your visual lesson plans too!

Have a great week!

Five for Friday (for once!) and Freebies!

I always take the pictures and tell myself I am going to participate in Doodle Bug's Five for Friday, but I always come home dead to the world on Friday nights!

So I'm super excited to be participating this week :)

 
Every morning (except Fridays), we do one of DeeDee Wills' Read, Trace, Glue, and Draw activities as our morning work. It is amazing! No more, Miss M, how do I do this? EVERYONE knows what to do. I can't wait until they can actually read it :)

Our kindergarten assessments this year were re-made to reflect the CCSS better, and that means they are harder! My kinder babies are expected to know a lot, including word problems (boo!). So, we used this farm scene from my Oh What Fun! K.CC.A.1 math pack to help us practice our mathematical language.

I would dictate a scene to the students, like "There are 5 horses in the barn" or "There are 3 chickens on the roof" and they had to show me on their farm scene. Next week, they are going to practice making up stories for each other. This will naturally lead into addition and subtraction word problem practice!

After our whole group practice, we did math tubs. I am trying REALLY hard to implement the ideas/techniques I got from Debbie Diller's math work stations book. So my kiddos and I work together to make charts of what they must/can do at each math tub. (Side note: Making the charts is a lot more work than I thought...but when I tried to skip them, it was chaos. I need to stick with it!) Here is the chart we made for our Roll and Color game. And another of the kiddos playing :) You can get the game for free here!

For reading, my class does a reader's workshop routine, which we call "me" time and "we" time. We have actually gotten really strong at "me" time (our independent reading) but the kiddos worked really hard to be "we" time (partner reading/table reading) experts this week! Look at these intense readers!

Even though most of my kiddos do not have the letter sound or sight work knowledge to actually be reading their books yet, they are very focused on reading the pictures! Even so, I wanted to give them something to build their confidence in reading the words. So the song book was born! This thing has been a favorite since day 1! They LOVE it!

I put the lyrics to any song that we sing in class in their songbook that they may read during our reader's workshop. We have especially been loving the color songs from Frog Street Press. I have made a freebie lyric page for all of the color songs that you can use here :) These songbooks are amazing for practice with one to one correspondence.

Since our stamina is not quite built up to a full fledged reading workshop, we are also starting to learn literacy station games to build up to actually having literacy stations. And to do that, we have been playing name games. I know I'm not doing anything new and different that you haven't seen before, but these games are working for my kiddos!

 

(Sorry for the shiny lamination picture)! This game gives the students practice writing their friend's names. On the large name, it also has a picture to help the kiddos build their letter/sound correspondence too!

This game has a card with each child's name on the front and their picture on the back. Then, they use the letter cubes to build the name of their friend.

This game has envelopes with each child's name and picture on the front. Inside, their name is cut up into pieces and the student has to put them back together.

After playing our games, we came back together whole group and made an ABC order list of our names.

In writing, we are working on adding details to our pictures (Lucy Caulkins). Obviously, my kinders have no idea what "details" means, so I did a little activity to show them! We made "1," "2," and "3" pictures.

A "1" picture is a picture with no color. It was rushed and does not look nice. There are scribbles.

A "2" picture is a picture that has a few colors. The illustrator spent a little more time on it, but it is still not their best work.

A "3" picture is your best work. It has tons of colors, all pictures colored in, background, and more. It is what all of our pictures should look like.

We went into a lot of discussion about how the pictures need to be detailed to help the reader understand our story. We hung them up on the wall and I reference them all the time!

Right now, we are learning about seasons in science. We have just finished up our unit on summer. We ended with making our own summer person. We talked about the types of things we wear in the summer and what we look like.

This little guy cracks me up. The bottom of his face is red because it is "burnt" and he has blue spots all over his body because he is "wet." So cute!

So this is a few more than 5 pictures...oops! Enjoy your weekend and I'll have my visual plans posted tomorrow :)