Team Up!

Wow! Today has been a whirlwind! It was my first day back with students. It was fun to see all the new faces and get to know them a little. This first week back my biggest goal is to set the classroom culture. Most of my students come to me with a lot of bad feelings about math. I feel like this first week is to try to get the kiddos to forget about the past because this year is going to be awesome! I tell them they're going to LOVE math at the end of the year. This is my goal as a teacher; to make math fun and teach it in a way that students can understand it.

Today we used grouping sticks for a getting to know you (GTKY) activity. Since I only have 20-23 students in each class, I took out 2 colors of sticks. If you haven't used grouping sticks, they're a great way to regroup students quickly with totally new groups (no student will be in the same group with someone twice). You call out a color, number, or shape for the groups. Super quick and easy. 

Students were grouped to do the Roll a... Tell Us... activity. Groups did the activity for about 3 minutes, then they regrouped and started again. This was a fun, quick activity to get students starting to know each other.  (I forgot to take pictures...bummer.)

You can get the grouping stick labels here for free. You can use these on regular popsicle sticks, they don't need to be colored.  They're printed on address labels, then cut apart. The document is made to make 2 sets of sticks. 

This is the Getting to Know You Dice Roll. You can get this activity from my TpT shop. It's a FREEBIE!!

Check back throughout the week for more team building activities. 

Your Opinion Needed + Weekly Freebie

Dear blogging friends,
I need your help. As you know from my previous post I like to create clipart. It's my new guilty pleasure. My family has been a bit neglected since I started illustrating. Oops!

 

Option 1

What I need your help with is deciding which style of clipart to continue doing. Option 1the more classic look.

Option 2

Or option 2- the more polished look (for lack of better description).  I do illustrate for fun, but I've put it on my TpT store as well. For a thank you for giving me your feedback, both of these girls are a free download. Click on the picture.
So, which one would you prefer if you were to use it on a product you're creating?

First Weekly Freebie

It's been a LONG time since my first post, but hopefully I can keep this blog up consistently from now on. I've started drawing clipart and I have found it quite addicting. I LOVE using Illustrator as a creative outlet. My goal is to give out a weekly clipart freebie here on the blog. So here is the first one two. These two critters are part of my Winter Kids clipart pack that you can find in my TpT store. I hope these little guys will find their way into something you're creating. Click on the images to download your freebie.

Here's a preview of my Winter Kids pack

Enjoy!
Apryl

Joining the World of Blogging

Hello Blogging World!
I've decided to try out this blog thing. There are so many talented and amazing teachers out their that have inspired me so I decided to share what I do in my classroom with the world. My goal for this blog is to connect to other teachers to improve my teaching and hopefully I can give something back to the education world.
I'm a 6th grade math teacher. I love teaching math. Before I started teaching I thought reading would be my favorite subject, but as I've taught I have found a love and passion for teaching math. My goal in the math classroom is to make it fun for students so they like math. Unfortunately, in today's world math gets a bad rep. I'm trying to change that, one engaging lesson at a time. I hope you will enjoy your time here at Making Math Amusing.

Currently I'm enjoying my first week of my 2 week spring break. It hasn't been the relaxing break I was hoping for, but I've had lots of fun and adventures already. I live in AZ which is so nice this time of year. Since the weather is wonderful right now and soon will be too hot to be outside I've spent a lot of time outdoors, hiking, spring training games, bike rides with my son and taking the dog for a walk.

I'm married to a wonderful guy (hubs) who is currently in medical school. I have a 9 year old son (B) who is in forth grade and my best buddy. We have a dog Sonic, who is hyper as all get out and loves walks.  These guys are my world so you'll probably hear about them frequently on the blog. 

I'm so excited to connect with all the wonderful teachers out there in the blogging world!