In the past few years, I have incorporated dice, dominoes and ten-frames into my classroom math practise. I have to give credit to Sherry Parish' book
Number Talks: Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies. I know ten-frames are by no means a new idea, but I certainly had never used them with any regularity until last year.
I love magnets and I am always trying to find ways to use this magnetic white board for something new. This is a simple idea: a ten frame and round dollar store magnets.
Any Kindergarten teacher can guess the poem that goes along with this activity. Sometimes it's better to start with a Five-Frame at the beginning of the year. Although these are small quantities, it can take time for children to build true competency and understanding.
We play outdoors each morning for 30 minutes and strive to find ways to incorporate math into our outdoor centres. Here the students are helping to paint dice cards. They used fly swatters, rocks and bean bags to count the dots and demonstrate 1:1 correspondence. The eventual goal is an ability to subitize the dot card amounts on sight.
We have a light table in our room and I do find it hard to come up with new materials to place on it. I had dot transparencies, wooden numbers and beads on the light table for months and often observed children visiting and exploring.
