Five for Friday: Math Station Mania

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs for FFF. Here's a peek at my crazy week:

 This week has been a little chaotic due to unplanned circumstances, but because I planned so thoroughly last week, it was less of a disaster than it could have been. I had exactly zero time to plan for a new student being added to my class on a day that I had an hour long meeting before school started. I also have less than 10 minutes to herd my darlings into the classroom, take attendance and lunch count and get them out the door to specials. Add in meeting a new student (and parents) and trying to get them situated while managing the rest of the kiddos was not quite the best first impression. I try really hard to not look stressed, even though my brain is screaming! This is the best visual for what is going on:

 Math station mania! My students are full swing into math stations and now that I've taught them most of the different types of activities, they are becoming much more independent. Some of the main types of stations we do are QR code task cards, cut and paste pages, fluency games, spinner pages, math sorts, skills pages, foldables or flip flap books, and interactive journal pages.

greater or less cut and paste page

greater or less practice page

These two activities are from my Greater or Less Geckos (2nd gr CCSS aligned) Activities pack. It also includes task cards and an interactive notebook page.

Here's a cut/paste sorting page from my Even and Odd Owls (2nd gr CCSS aligned) Activities:

 I have a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with glue. I spend so much time teaching 2nd graders how to use glue that it's kind of ridiculous. I've seen gluing anchor charts on Pinterest, which only tells me that this isn't just my struggle. I think it's time I tried glue sponges. I'm taking the glue sponge plunge this weekend. Wish me luck next week as we have yet another lesson on using glue. I will hunt down this book, because this is exactly what it feels like to bring out the glue in my classroom sometimes.

 My students have enjoyed using spinner pages so much that I decided to make a set of them called Print and Play Math Spinner Games. I took them out for a "spin" (yes, I'm that corny) this week to test them out and work out any bugs before I uploaded them to TpT. I really love testing my products out on my students before publishing them whenever I can. Sometimes I find little typos or that the directions aren't clear enough. After a few tweaks, I can say that these have been kid tested and teacher approved! They are ridiculously easy to prep, too! All you need to do is print and copy enough for your students and throw in some paper clips and you are done! You can also print a few, either laminate or put in sheet protectors and use dry erase markers. You can't find an easier math station to prep.

We also wrapped up a science unit on matter with some experiments. The funniest moment of the week was when we mixed a liquid (vinegar) and a solid (baking soda) to make a gas. It is a simple experiment that can be assembled with things you probably have around already. All you do is put about a teaspoon of baking soda in a balloon and about 2-3 tablespoons of vinegar in an empty water bottle. Carefully, and without tipping the contents of the balloon into the bottle, you put the opening of the balloon around the mouth of the bottle. When you tell the kids to go, they lift up the balloon so the baking soda falls into the bottle and watch as the gas fills up the balloon. My kids were convinced that it was going to explode. The screams that filled my classroom would have sent the principal running! One kid yelled, "It's gonna blow!" and all the kids hit the deck and some even went under their desks. My only regret is that I didn't have my video camera going. It was too funny!

Afterwards, we wrote a note in our agendas to parents saying:
"We made gas today. Ask me how."
(I made sure they knew it wasn't the bean burritos from the cafeteria.)