Ghostly Math and Blasting Off for Fact Families!

Woohoo for Fall Break! 5 days of relaxation and playing with Sullivan! He is gearing up for Halloween:

I am gearing up for more parent/teacher conferences! I had 22 out of 28 scheduled, then 6 no shows so that means I have 12 more to do this week!

I'm also gearing up for decorating our classroom for the Fall - I'm going in on Monday to work on getting our tree ready and switching out our Ten Frame cards for these monsters from my Fall Holidays Ten Frames pack

Speaking of new decorations, I received a new  Fact Family BLAST OFF pocket chart from Smilemakers and my students are LOVING it! So far we've been using it in whole group in the afternoon as a review, but my kiddos keep going over and checking it our like these little guys did during breakfast:

Each afternoon we put a new fact family card up and then figure out the addition and subtraction sentences we can make. Once we have the chart complete we crouch down, count backwards from 10 and then leap up shouting "Blast off!" The kids are enthralled the whole time and they are really starting to get the hang of fact families!

Smilemakers gave me the pocket chart to review and I have to tell you, I LOVE their site! So many cool items! I am eying a bunch of stickers as well as erasers and art supplies! The best part is being able to sort the site by occupation so I can see all the educator items easily!


I am getting a student teacher next week and I'm a bit nervous since I've only had my class back for 10 school days. We still haven't settled into a complete routine. One thing we're working on is work stations or centers. Since there are 28 of them, it has a tendency to get a bit noisy to say the least! This week I'm pulling out some fun Halloween things to give them an incentive to work quietly:

 We're working on comparing numbers, missing addends and place value, these fun printables will be a hit for sure with my kiddos!

I made a Halloween Addition Search pack so my kiddos can have fun searching for addition sentences and solving them.

 Missing addend clothespin activity.

 Write the room for missing addends.

 Addition & Subtraction Roll & Cover games.

 A 120 chart and number lines to help with comparing numbers, addition and missing addends.

All of these can be found in my new Ghostly Math pack, my Halloween Addition Search or my Halloween Roll & Cover pack.


I haven't finalized plans for Literacy this week - off to watch Despicable Me 2 with the kiddos and then I will work on my ELA block! I hope you're having a great weekend!