Simplify Fractions Worksheet

My students love pixel art. I don't know what it is about coloring in little squares and watching all of those little squares become something special...but it is magic to them. When I realized we desperately needed practice simplifying fractions I knew I needed to combine the two concepts. 

Hello - brilliant!

Let me introduce you to a classroom favorite! 

The preparation is simple for this activity. Copy the blank grid worksheet for each student. Then I offer my students a little bit of advice. I tell them that a whiteboard or scratch paper can be extremely helpful. Tell them to pick a square. (Of course I model this for all to see.) I write the fraction, simplify, find the answer in the coloring code and color. If it is supposed to stay white I have my students draw a light line through it with a pencil. This lets them know it has been done and should stay white.

Next I tell my students that the next part is the most important part. They are welcome to do each fraction one square at a time. It works, but it can take a long time. Personally, I tell them, look through the puzzle finding all the other duplicates of the same fraction and color those in. This helps the picture appear a bit faster and students get excited to start to see the picture coming together. 

TA-DA! This is what our picture turns into: a delightful cupcake!

This worksheet is great for giving additional practice, a wonderful fast finisher and a spectacular piece of extra credit. Click HERE to go directly to my TPT store. Give it a try. I know you will love it - my students do!

Crazy Day

When the weather looks like this...

And has for many days in a row it starts to take its toll. I knew by the middle of last week that we needed a break from "normal" life. 

We decided to have a CRAZY DAY! When I scheduled the day I wasn't sure what it would entailed but I knew we would wear our pajamas while doing it! 

When the day is cold and foggy pajamas and a sweatshirt make everything a bit easier to bare. My students loved them too. I had more than one that told me how "cozy" they felt. 

Other than wearing pajamas I wanted our day to be a bit unusual. I need things to be exciting even while doing the normal everyday core lessons. After a bit of research I found exactly the app I was looking for.

This app is called Spinny Wheel and only cost $0.99. This was it! My golden ticket! My source for crazy day.

On Spinny Wheel you are able to program the activities you want and how many "lives" each section will have. (A life is how many times you can land on that section of the pie.) If you want you can even change the likelihood you will land on a specific slice. I didn't worry about that. I simply put in our normal core lessons and added a few fun games. 

I introduced the wheel to my students. We used tickets to randomly draw out a name. The selected student came up and spun the wheel. They cheered when it would stop on a subject. The timer was set and we were off. 

My students loved doing our normal things out of order! To be honest, so did I. We laughed a lot while each time the wheel was spun. Then we got to work and finished our work.

CRAZY DAY was such a success it is now on the books for once a month. I can't promise we will wear pajamas but we will use the wheel and mess up as much of our schedule as we can. 

Give it a try! CRAZY DAY can make any ordinary day feel special. 

Valentine's Calendar Project

It's February! The snow has been coming down in full force. We have spent many recesses indoors and needed a fun project. Maybe you need something to take up time or need something fun for your hallway display. If you fit any of these categories I would like to introduce...

CALENDAR ART

Grab a bunch of old calendars and tear them apart. Our school was given a bunch of old calendars. They simply sat in our workroom doing nothing but gathering dust. Maybe you have a stack of old calendars or can grab some from your local dollar store. It doesn't matter the pattern or picture. We used calendars with flowers, tigers, penguin, drawings, dogs, landscapes and even people. Really, anything can work. 

Next cut your calendar in thin strips. It doesn't matter the direction you cut it or if the strips get all mixed up. (In fact it looks better when it does get all mixed up.)

Give each student a photocopied heart on white construction paper. I told my class to bubble cut out their heart and then flip it over. 

Instruct students to glue a section of their heart and then lay their strips onto their heart. I told my students I didn't want to see any white showing through. If a strip was crooked they should overlap the strips.

See...

Finally cut around your heart. I suggest doing this over the garbage can since all the scraps will flutter all over if you don't. Glue your finished heart to a piece of construction paper and hang up.

They are very simple and yet we have received lots of compliments.

Happy Valentine's Day!