Geometric Solids and Money Honey

Teaching multiple grade levels can get a little tricky. This week I dove into the world of geometric solids AND counting money. I was a tad concerned with the geometric solids. I had never covered this topic before as our previous adoption didn't touch it. Here is what we did.

Monday I introduced the solids. We talked about the types of surfaces (such as curved, flat, points, etc.) I passed around the solids so they could touch them having say the name of the solid as they did so. Then we sorted pictures by the type of solid they were. I remembered this activity from my days in a Montessori classroom. I downloaded this activity from Montessori for Everyone for $5. I knew it would take me a long time to create, and I wanted high quality real world photographs.

We later played a game with the cards. Students would draw a card and then say the solid name . I may turn the photographs into a Smartboard file for sorting that way as well. These cards are now in the math center for independent practice.

The next day we made the solids out of Playdough.

 We also made a chart about the solids.  Finally we went on a shape hunt around the building. They really enjoyed this and got very creative in their finds. The kiddos held up their geometric solids in from of their finds and I took pictures with out classroom iPod Touch.

In my other groups we played several money games that I purchased from Cara Carrol on TPT called The Great Coin Collection. I highly recommend. To reinforce, I made this little center to practice counting coins. Setup is super simple. I put actual money into eight different baggies. I like to use actual money when possible. Plastic coins can be inconsistent in their appearance and can confuse my little learners. I tell the kids that I know how much money is in the baggies, so I have not had any problems with kids taking it. I labeled the baggies 1-8. The kiddos count the amount in each baggie and record their answer on the correct pig. They thought it was so cool that they were counting actual money (and so did I).

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