Area and Perimeter using Pentominoes

I began using math stations today.  One of my kids favorite stations was the area and perimeter station.  I filled a black tub with one inch square tiles and pentominoes.  Pentominoes have five squares hooked together on a flat plane in 12 different variations.  Students can do so many activities with them in relation to shapes, rotations, reflections, translations, area, and perimeter.  I created a set of pentominoes which you can download for free. Click here for your free download. Ideas for using the pentominoes includes:

1. finding the area and perimeter of each pentomino
2. using the pentominoes to cover a given shape (like a puzzle)
3. combine the pentominoes together to create a shape with a given area
4. combine the pentominoes together to create a shape with a given perimeter
5. using the pentominoes to cover a given shape and then find the area and perimeter

Do you use pentominoes in your classroom? If so, do you have an idea you can share? I would love for you to leave a comment and let us know.

Giveaways!!! Teachers Notebook and The Teacher in Me!

It's Freebie Friday and there are giveaways in the air!! I finally figured out rafflecopter and I am trying it out for the first time below. The winner will receive two units of their choice from my TpT store! I'm now in the process of pulling all my writing resources into one big mega pack. It's taking me awhile because I'm creating new items for writing as I go aside from what I already have done. Click here though to pick up your free Descriptive/Expository Writing Graphic Organizer. It's just one of the many in the mega pack!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Freebie Friday: Christmas Multiplication Freebie

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Everywhere you go!!! Good thing you can't hear me singing. LOL

Anyways, the whole month of December I've been working to instill the concept of multiplication with my kiddos.  I am an absolute firm believer in knowing the concept behind the math before memorizing anything.  So we've done all kinds of work with groups of things and relating it to repeated addition and multiplication notation.  For some of my work, I used Pearson's Investigations Unit 5.  I made this freebie to complement that unit but it can absolutely be used alone.  Also, check out my Teacher's Notebook store while you're there picking up your freebie.  Everything in the store is 30% off and I'm also hosting a GIVEAWAY! Enter for a chance to win the Christmas Descriptive Writing unit.  This freebie can also be found in my TpT store as well.
Click here for your freebie!  These are some of the pages you get with this freebie!!

My students really enjoyed this unit and I think they did a great job with it!  They used some stencils I had in my room for the pictures.

My friend and teaching partner Nicole had a great idea for modeling arrays.  She had the students make trays of cookies.  Here are pictures of her students' work.  Love this idea and will use it next year!!

I love comments!  Please let me know if you use these ideas or if you have an idea that you can add to this post.  I love Blog Followers!  Please follow me if you like what you see!

Christmas Descriptive Writing

I was so excited to start my Christmas descriptive writing project today at school.  To my dismay though I found out when I got there that the color printer is broken and we do not know when we will be getting it fixed.  I had to think of something quick to replace my idea.   I decided to switch my unit up a little.  I gave each student a blackline copy of either an ugly Christmas sweater, an ornament, or a stocking.  I told them to color the picture and/or add designs to it anyway they wish.  We did something similar to this for Halloween only I didn't give them a pattern.  They had to draw a monster from scratch.  Tomorrow my students will have to write a description of their picture.  I am going to mix up the descriptions and have the students try to guess from the description what picture their friend colored.  I will have a stack of blacklines for them to choose from.  Once they find the blackline that they believe matches the description, I will have them recreate the picture from the description only.  Originally, I was just going to have my students use the colored copy only and then write a description.  KPMdoodles has some of the most wonderful clipart.  I used her Ugly Christmas Sweater Set and her Holiday Trimmings Set to make a descriptive writing unit.

Here is an example of a sweater and a stocking for the kids to describe.  I can't wait for tomorrow to see how the students write their descriptions.

If you would like to know more about this unit please visit my Teacher's Pay Teachers store or click on the picture.  Here is a freebie from that unit that can be used in multiple ways aside from descriptive writing.

Manic Monday Freebies

I haven't posted all week last week! I miss my blog when I don't post! I didn't want to miss Manic Monday though so here it is! I can definitely post a picture of what mine look like but this is a glyph.  A glyph uses pictures to represent pieces of information.  I usually do a me glyph each fall with a paper plate as the students faces and each part of the face represents a piece of information.  The color of the eyes matches the students eye color. The shape of the mouth stands for the number of siblings the student has and so on.  I created a Cowboy Me Glyph to go with my Western theme.  Here it is for you if you would like to do a glyph also.  Let me know what you think!