A peek at our math stations for the week

I have only been back to work two days this week and I'm already way too busy. It's 5:15 am as I'm writing this post. I had every intention of posting last night but we took dinner to friends that just had a baby. It was way more fun holding a sweet baby and playing with their almost 2 year old. So here I am posting. I didn't intentionally get up at 4:30. I just woke up. I think I might have overdone it yesterday with my knee. So I'm blogging and icing it before work. I'm sure I'll be paying for this early wake up at about 6 today when I slow down. Anyway, I spent Monday at school not getting all the things done that I had planned for the work day. Instead I did a lot of talking. I surely hope I'm not the only one that has this problem when they return to work. I had lots of catching up to do. But I did get some things finished up yesterday. Part of that being updating my math workstations for the next 2 weeks. I am finally feeling like I've gotten the routine of getting them together down. Now if I could just get the routine of finding the time to do them down. Yesterday, I accidentally stayed outside a little longer than I should have. Whoops. I'm not going to feel too guilty because it's January and the days you can go out and play comfortable are few and far between. Anyway, I took some pictures of the different activities and I thought I would share. Some of them come from my Warm Up with Wintery Workstations pack. (You can find it here on TPT)

  I had a parent donate some money to the classroom as part of a holiday she celebrates in her culture. So I used it to buy these drawers at Wal-mart. This is the best way I've found to organize my math work stations. I keep it in the back of the room next to my desk, mainly because that's the only room I had for them. But they are on wheels so I can wheel it to the front to the room when I'm explaining what they need to do. (This is an area I really need to work on. The showing the workstations. Now that I'm creating some of my own and they stay similar I'm hoping that will help.)

 The white drawers have the games they can play in them. I usually have 2 pairs of students playing games so I try to have 3 options. Usually one option is a have to and one pair has to play that one first. I also try to have one game that both pairs can play. (Certain games they love) I've tried to make them games that we've played in class too so they already have some experience playing. One of the games is a subtraction game below. The game has two spinners and a game board. I like to put my games in the page protectors and it cuts down on lamination. This game they spin the first spinner and get a number. The second spinner tells them to -1 or -2. If they do it correctly, they move one space on the board. The game board has different things like move up 2, move back 1, and take another turn. (This is from my work station pack)

 The next game is bump. My kids are obsessed with bump. It's one of their favorites. I'm really not sure where this version came from. The file doesn't have a cover page or an author. I know I found it on someones blog last year. I hate that I don't know where it's from. If you made it, please let me know. I know Sunny Days in Second and Mrs. Lirrette's Learning Detectives make a lot of these.(A reader sent me the link. This one can be found at Spotlight on Kindergarten)

 I think the have to game is this addition matching game from my work station pack. It has the numbers 1-12 and then addition sentences that equal those. My kids are getting pretty good at this. Jennifer Knopf had a great fall one and then I made one for Christmas and one for winter. We probably will do something different next time. (My workstations usually last about 2 weeks or longer depending on the activity and what they need practice with)

 The next drawer has the ipods in it. I didn't take a picture of those because there is nothing exciting about them. I do need to work on adding some new apps. That was one of my to dos on Monday that just didn't happen. I'm thinking I'll bring them home over the weekend and work on it then. The next activities are problem solving activities. I'm not actually sure that other people would call them problem solving but it's the way I think of them. I have number cards for 1-50 and 3 different work mats. Two of them are working on number order and one is working on comparing numbers. They pick the numbers and then work through it. I should probably include a recording sheet but I don't have one right now. This is the first time we're doing this and I want them to explore some first. This is from my pack as well. (side note, I'm in love with these penguins. They are from the wonderful Nancy Messenger. Love her clipart. You can check her penguins out here)

This next drawer is for graphing. I try to have a different graphing activity each time. I noticed in some of our beginning of the year assessments this was an area of weakness. This time we're doing a survey. This is the first time I've had them do something like this so we'll see how it goes. We're short on copies at our school so I use the function that makes things half a page a lot. There are 2 choices. One has to do with making a snowman and the other hot chocolate. I got these from a winter surveys pack from the blog Of Primary Importance. (I'm now realizing the importance of cover sheets and putting my blog on freebies.) If you click the link, you'll be taken to her post with this freebie. She had several other choices for the surveys. 

 The last drawer is exploration. This time they are working on creating shapes different ways with pattern blocks. I took the sheet from our math series. It was something we worked on but I usually send these home for homework. They really enjoy being about to explore with different manipulatives

So those are our workstations for the next few weeks. What kind of activities do you use for work stations? Now that I have the stations all set up I need to work on meeting with small groups to focus on some skills. That's the next step to work on.
I have one last picture to share with you. Now that we are in the second semester I wanted to move the kids' desks. I haven't moved them since the first day of school. I can't do it by myself with my knee and I'm technically still suppose to be on light duty and not doing anything too strenuous at school. My assistant was going to stay yesterday and help me. But I had no idea where I wanted the kids. So after school, I took small post its and made a little chart to help me. Thought I would share the tip. I used those post it flags and had 4 different colors. It helped me to color code for each group so I could split some of them up and not have them with the exact same kids. So here's the finished product:

I love the colorful post its. Please tell me I'm not the only one obsessed with post its and school supplies. How do you move kids' seats around?