Help! Teaching Math to 5 year Olds -- STRESS!

    If you read my blog regularly, you probably know that I sing with Carolina Style Chorus, part of an international organization of woman who like to sing together in the barbershop style -- a Capella  -- the Sweet Adelines. This was the weekend of our big yearly fundraiser, so I left school and went straight to work setting up tables and chairs and gathering all my best dishes and table decorations for the event, the Festival of Tables. My son made cupcakes for the dessert table, and by 2:00 a.m. we

were done for the night. This morning I left the house at 8:00 to continue the preparations. We had about 27 tables to decorate,  served the food to our guests, then took off our aprons and put on our sparkly outfits and stepped up on the risers to do what we love -- sing. It was great fun and we got a standing ovation. But then it was time for all the clean up and pack up. I got home at 3:30, left all the decorations and dirty dishes in the car, and stumbled to the bed, where I collapsed and slept for about 2 hours.  Here are a couple pictures  -- the first one is my table. Can you tell that I love cardinals?

Here's another pretty one

And my favorite, the dessert table!

      Although I love my job, it can be stressful, and singing helps me unwind -- and makes me a happier and more relaxed teacher.

       Speaking of stressful -- it has been one of those weeks as I tried to find a way to cover the required math standard.  "Decompose numbers less than or equal to 10 into pairs in more than one way... And record each decomposition by a drawing or equation."  In other words, I need to get them to understand the different combinations of numbers that are equal to each number -- like 5 is 1+ 4 and 2+3 and 0 +5.  We always try to give them hands-on manipulatives, so I started by giving each child a set of 6 connecting cubes. The plan was to let them trade one cube with a partner so they would have 5 + 1. But before I could even get all the cubes given out, they were making guns or crosses, taking their partner's cubes, losing part of the 6 -- it was impossible.  I was ready to beat my head against the wall.  So I took up all the cubes and just demonstrated with magnetic buttons on a cookie sheet.

   Then I saw an idea on another teacher's blog, so I made some little bracelets with pony beads to demonstrate the concept the next day.

   These helped - at least they weren't making guns -- but still didn't seem like they were getting it.

Back to the drawing board.

     Then my blogger friend, Heidi Butkus --creator of many songs and games and videos we use in my class-- shared an idea about using a jack-o-lantern picture to make combinations using teeth. 

I had the little equation cards that I bought from Teachers Pay Teachers -- Guiding Kinders Math Workshop by Deedee Wills and Deanna Jump. These worked very well to help the kids start writing equations.  

Heidi also sent me a pattern for trees to use for this activity, and I already had some little apple erasers that I bought a few years ago, and this worked great -- they finally got it and were even able to work with a team to do some equations.

     So, looks like they are starting to get it -- and I am so grateful for all those teachers across the country who are helping me teach in a way that the children understand. You can't always just turn to the next page in the workbook in kindergarten -- sometimes you have to explore other ways to get the lesson across and go beyond the book. It will still take lots of practice, but that is what kindergarten is all about!

    We learned about fire safety this week -- a subject very near to us, since 2 of my students have had house fires in the past year. I asked them to sit down with their family and work out an escape plan, and so I feel a little better about that.  The " stop, drop, and roll" message was fun, but had to correct the misconception that some had -- you only do that if your clothes are on fire. "What do you do if your house is on fire?" STOP DROP AND ROLL!! " "No, you get out of the house and call 911!" 

 Look at the cute fire trucks they made.

    I am seeing progress in their writing, too -- some wrote describing sentences this week about apples. They were so proud.

   Still working on spaces between words....my job isn't finished yet....so I will keep singing!