Math Small Group

Math small groups have always been a little daunting for me. I have a confession. I probably shouldn't say this but... I am not a big fan of math. I feel that there are math people, and then there are ELAR people. I am definitely the latter. I love Reading and English Language Arts. Math.... not so much.

However, I recently attended a two-day workshop on math centers and THEN had to go back to my school and present what I learned to the group.  The workshop was great. It was 20+ teachers in a room doing centers(fuuuuuuun!.) While I got to experience OVER 50 centers, here are a few quick ones with stuff you probably already have in your room.

These were a few of my favorite.

Hide the Bears

I know this seems so simple but this really shows if a child can compose/decompose numbers. You show the children 5 bears/cubes/counters and then put the all under the bowl. Take out different numbers of cubes and ask the child to tell you how many are hiding. It was really fun to see the kids do this and it was really fun for the to see if they were right.

Pete the Cat Groovy Buttons was fun because it incorporates my favorite thing... Literature! ;)

On this one the children take turns rolling dice and either adding or subtracting buttons depending on the still that you are working on. It would be very easy to add a recording sheet to this for an individual center. You can click  HERE for the template.

I couldn't find these Hefty animal plates anywhere so I ordered the from Amazon but people assure me that you can still get them at the store. These are great for part-part whole, composing decomposing, addition and subtraction. In the small group activity, were given a word problem and used the cubes to represent bracelets and given them away. There are a lot of possibilities with these plates. 

Lastly, this is so simple that I can't believe I never thought of it. It's called Sticker Store. Each child gets a small back or container of coins and there are bags labeled with the names of the coins. They have to buy them from you with their money. In Kindergarten we are just working on coin recognition BUT if you wanted to make this harder, you could easily charge .99 cents. :) 

There you have it. My favorite centers from my workshop. Hopefully, these are something you can use in your classroom. If you have any easy math small group activities, I'd love to hear them! Leave a comment.