Spring is in the air! Here in North Carolina we tend to go from 30 degrees to 80 in one week (sometimes in one day), so I am forced to embrace Spring. March is a short month for us due to spring break but jammed packed with St. Patrick's Day, Easter, and all other things warm and sunshiney! This month I am excited to share a few of my favorite Spring Math ideas for primary grades.   Shoebox Word Problems:  My kids still need plenty of practice solving word problems. Many can now go beyond adding to 20 and we are working on adding double digits and multiples of ten. Rather than simply solving word problems on paper, I created this simple shoebox center. First I covered a shoebox with brown construction paper, wrapped like a gift. Then I cut some grass fringe and added it to the top. Finally I cut some slits in the top of the box to slide my laminated carrot cards into. This is a simple center you can create with any problems of your choice, or you can find my C......

Hello! I hope you are having a great start to your year! January certainly seemed to fly by. Over the summer when Theresa's Teaching Tidbits and I planned out our year of Math Tip Monday posts I knew I would be teaching place value around this time of year. Thank goodness! We have done addition and subtraction (all Operation and Algebraic standards) for the past 18 weeks and certainly can use a change.  However...we are getting ready to kick off all of our place value fun over the next few weeks. Today I will share a sneak peak of some of our plans for the unit. I will be sure to come back and add photos throughout the next few weeks of the plans in action. When I first started teaching place value in first grade (pre-common core) years ago, I basically thought it meant taking out some of these old trusty base ten blocks and calling it a day. Students could quickly look at a number and see that they needed some long sticks for the first digit and some cubes for the second ......