Fall Math Activities - with 2 FREEBIES!

Are you a Target mini eraser fiend? I stalk that Dollar Spot every chance I can, hoping to snag some mini erases! My students LOVE them, so much so that they'll happily practice math skills all day long, just for the chance to work with the erasers!

When I saw the Halloween erasers this year, I just had to create some activities to go with them!

Find them here: Fall Mini Eraser Pack! 

 Ten frame mats and number cards for the jack o'lantern and black cat erasers!

 One mat for 0-10 and one for 0-20 so you can easily differentiate!

 Spiderweb cards from 0-10 for practicing 1-1 correspondence with the spider erasers!

 2 patterning mats for practicing AB, AABB, AAB and ABC patterns with the spider erasers!

 Need a fun pumpkin activity? Check out this Pumpkin Math FREEBIE!

And if you're working on graphing, you'll want to check out my Fall Graphing Pack:

 2 Count & Graph activities.

 4 Graphs with charts - slip them in a page protector or laminate for reuse!

 2 Roll & Graph activities - students LOVE getting to roll the dice and graph!

 4 Spin & Graph activities.

Tip: just use a pencil and paperclip to create a spinner!

2 Pictographs! Students color and cut out the pictures to glue on their graphs!

Want to grab a FREEBIE? Check out my Thanksgiving Dinner graph!

And finally, the winners of my Facebook contest for a Utopia 360 4D VR/AR Bundle were announced, but if you didn't win don't worry, you can still get these STEM toys at MyRetrak and use the promo code "Herding Kats" for a 20% off discount on your entire order!

Red Ribbon Week Doors & Character Pumpkins!

This is our Red Ribbon Week, and we have some serious contenders for Best Decorated Door:

"Don't Be Afraid To Say No!"  The background really makes this door - but the cheesecloth ghosts are super cute too!

"Drugs Are a Trick Not A Treat" These candy corn are super simple and cute - just crumpled tissue paper!

"Elect Not To Do Drugs!" This Election themed door is particularly appropriate this year!

 "Tell Drugs Its The End Of The Road" This is a fun one for a car-crazy class!

 "You Only Live Once, Fly Above The Influence" These paper towel roll rockets were a blast for the students to decorate!

 "Mooooove Over Drugs" These paper plate cows come from our Pre-k class - they did an awesome job!

 "Don't Get Wrapped Up In Drugs" This mummy door is from our Counselor - love it!

"Slam Dunk, Drugs Are Junk!" I love the over-the-door hoop for this door, and the basketballs are Styrofoam balls cut in half and painted orange!

"Drugs Are Sticky Business!" This is a 2nd grade door with glitter spiderwebs - love the unsuspecting victim all tangled up by the spider in the top left corner!

"There's No Room On Our Broom For Drugs!" These brooms are made with sticks from the playground and paper bags! 

And, of course I saved the best for last! My class is full of Pokemon Masters, so of course we had to do a Pokemon themed door:

 "Drugs Can't Catch Us! We Are Having A Ball Being Drug Free!" 

We created the Poke-balls with 2 paper plates. We cut the first one in half and painted one half red. Then we added a long, skinny black rectangle, and cut out 3 different sizes of circles. We used a brad to secure the two halves to the 2nd plate. I had each child color their own Pikachu mask (from this site), and then took their photo as they showed me their best "Pokemon escaping" pose. I printed the pictures on card stock and cut them out. Then the kids glued their picture in the opening of the Poke-ball, so it looks like they're jumping out of the Poke-ball!

 The winners will be announced Friday, so we're crossing our fingers!

I also had some great Pumpkin Character book reports turned in! Here are some of my faves: 

Pete The Cat Character Pumpkin made with paint, paper and pipe cleaners!

This family went all out with their "The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear" pumpkin - when my sweetie brought it in, she showed me the exact page that this scene is from!

This Curious George pumpkin is so cute!

I love this Cookie Monster pumpkin - especially since he came with a chocolate chip cookie!

Alright, I'm off to enter grades into our computer program - Progress Reports get printed Friday! I'd love to hear about your Red Ribbon Week - rustle up a comment below and share your favorite door display or character pumpkin!

Math & Reading Centers for Halloween/Fall! (FREEBIE!)

Halloween Math & Reading Activities

I took a trip to Target recently, and got inspired by some of their Dollar Spot goodies! I've spent the last few days getting some fun centers ready for my kiddos:

I found these mini Halloween clothespins and knew they'd be perfect for my Halloween Counting Clip Cards!

The kids count the cookies on the card and then clip the clothespin on the correct number.

I place a sticker on the back of the card corresponding to the correct answer. This way my students can flip the card over and get instant feedback on whether they were correct or not!

I also have a Fall Counting Clip Card set that doesn't include Halloween images. 

 I couldn't find any mini clothespins for this set, so I spray painted some regular clothespins! Again, I placed some fun Fall stickers on the backs of the cards so that this activity is self-correcting for my students!

 Next I found these mini erasers! They're sold in sets of 60 for just $1 and make perfect math manipulatives! I put a couple of bags into a pencil box and use it as an early finisher activity - my students pattern with them, count them, sort them, make shapes with them - you name the math skill, you can do it with mini erasers!

 I also use them as tokens for my Roll And Cover games! 

 

 The students each pick a type of mini eraser as their token, and then roll the dice and cover the number they rolled. For my more advanced students, I have mats that use 2 dice or even 3 dice! 

I also prepped my new Scarecrow Alphabet Match-Up Cards! These are so easy to differentiate - some of my students work on matching upper to lowercase letters.

 While others work on matching letter to beginning sound picture.

Sometimes they even match all 3 at once!

I have a few students who need extra practice with rhyme recognition, so my Pumpkin Rhyming Match-Up Cards are making their debut in centers this month!

And here's your freebie - some cute number cards to go with the web coasters also from Target! 

I cut the rings off some spider rings so that I had some colorful spider counters and now my kiddos have another high-interest counting activity! Not only can they use the cards to add spiders to the webs, they can also put them in numerical order and I can use them to test for one-to-one correspondence! 

If you want to grab these cute spider number cards, just click the picture to download them for free from my Google Drive! 

Now that I have some fun Halloween/Fall centers done, I'm going to be focusing on my STEM Nursery Rhyme series, so if you're one of the patient souls waiting for the next one, know that they're in the pipeline!