It's a Product Swap for Saturday!

Happy Saturday! I hope you're relaxing and getting a chance to enjoy the weekend.  Summer will be here before you know it! (I keep telling myself that, even though I watched a tennis match that was called because of SNOW earlier this week!)

I had the chance to participate in a fun product swap hosted by Melissa over at Jungle Learners.

 

This time around I was partnered with Sandra over at Sandra's Savvy Teaching Tips. Sandra is from Canada and she has some great ideas on her blog perfect for the primary grades.  It was fun to find yet another blog to follow!



I checked out Sandra's store and really wanted to try her newest science unit on soil.  It is full of reading passages, comprehension activities, vocabulary cards and science activities.  But.... we're not doing soil until May to go along with our planting unit, so on the wishlist it went!

I decided on her Teaching Math With Playing Cards unit.  I have a ton of decks of cards in my room and we use them for math games a lot.  Sandra's unit added even more ideas!

Sandra starts out with some helpful tips for managing those cards and getting your students to become independent in getting the cards they need.  I love the tip abut keeping all the cards in a basket and just having students reach in and grab a stack "no fatter than their finger."  It really doesn't matter if kids have a full deck for these activities, so that makes things even easier!

This unit includes two types of resources - ideas for card games, and activity sheets to be used to practice various math skills with the cards.  I used the games for the last part of our math time.  It was a great way to give students time to practice those basic math skills in a fun way.

The activity sheets were perfect for some review for my kiddos.  I put each of them in a sheet protector with a dry erase marker and eraser so they could be used over and over again.

Then we went to work!  Every student got a sheet and a deck of cards.  They used the cards to practice everything from place value, to counting on, to 2-digit addition and more!

I liked that I could differentiate for each student depending on what they needed to practice.  I also had many of them use 2 and 3 digit numbers, rather than just single digits.  It was easy for them to write whatever numbers they made with the cards on the sheets and then just work at their level.

After they completed one sheet, it was quickly checked by and adult and then they switched with someone to do another sheet.  My kiddos loved this because at this point in the year everything was review and they could work quickly.  I had students who were able to do 3 or 4 sheets n 15 minutes and they loved it!

After we were done, I took all the papers out and put them in a file for later on.  I can pull the sheets I need next year as we hit those skills and have some easy-prep centers and practice activities.  By using the cards, students can work on the same sheet, but have different problems. It was a win all around!

Thinking you might want to try this resource in your room?  You're in luck! Sandra was kind enough to let me give away a copy of the unit to one lucky winner! You can enter using the Rafflecopter below from now until midnight Tuesday night. One lucky winner will be chosen!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

You can visit Sandra's blog to read about the "Being a Scientist" unit that I shared with her.  And be sure to check out some of the other product swap posts - you might just find more great resources or the end of the year and beyond!