iboard: Alien Pairs to 10

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What it is: Alien Pairs to 10 is a fun warm up game for the primary math classroom.  Students are given 60 seconds to find as many pairs of 10 as they can.  The numbers students have to choose from are written on Aliens, with the target number (always 10) on the spaceship.  Students drag pairs of aliens into the spaceship and check the answer to find out how many pairs that equal 10 they can find.


How to integrate iboard: Alien Pairs to 10 into the classroom: Alien Pairs to 10 will bring out the inner competition in any student.    To use this site with an interactive whiteboard, split your students into teams.  Have students face off to find out who can find the most pairs of 10 before their 60 seconds are up.  This site was created with interactive whiteboards in mind but, to be honest,  I think this site is best suited for classroom computers as a math center activity.  Keep a running scoreboard next to your classroom computers where you post the high scores of the week.


Tips: iboard has a variety of activities for the interactive whiteboard that can be purchased.  Alien Pairs to 10 is one of their freebie samples.


Leave a comment and share how you are using iboard: Alien Pairs to 10 in your classroom.

iboard: Treasure Hunt

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What it is: Treasure Hunt is an interactive game where students practice following directions to coordinates on a grid.  Students are given a set of directions that they must follow to find a hidden treasure.  Directions are in the format of left, right, up, and down.


How to integrate Treasure Hunt into the classroom: Treasure Hunt gives students a platform to practice direction.  Students are given directions such as take 3 steps right, take 1 step down, take 4 steps left, dig.  If students have followed the directions correctly, they will reveal a hidden treasure.  Use Treasure Hunt for a whole class game.   Split students into two teams.  Have each team form a line at the interactive whiteboard.  Team one sends up their first player to follow the first direction, then the next player on team one takes a turn, etc.  If they correctly follow directions and dig up a treasure their team receives a point.  Repeat with team two.  Students could also practice coordinates at a math center on the classroom computers.


Tips: iboard has a variety of activities for the interactive whiteboard that can be purchased.  Treasure Hunt is one of their freebie samples.


Leave a comment and share how you are using iboard: Treasure Hunt in your classroom.

iboard: Shopping to a Budget

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What it is: Shopping to a Budget is another of iboard’s offering.  Students are given a set amount of money to spend.  They can choose to “purchase” a variety of candies to spend all of their money.  This is a UK site so all of the coins are British (not US dollar).  There are 3 levels of difficulty to choose from.  With each level of difficulty, the amount to spend increases.


How to integrate Shopping to a Budget into the classroom: Shopping to a Budget helps students practice budgeting and counting coins.  Shopping to a Budget gives students the opportunity to use and practice addition and subtraction.  Students also practice using math language (“you’ve spent 10p, how much more to 27p? What is the difference?”)  This is a fun little activity for practicing counting money, addition, and subtraction on the interactive whiteboard.  Split students into teams and reveal the target numbers.  Students can work within their teams to decide what their team would buy.  Invite one team up to the board to demonstrate how they solved the problem.  Other teams can offer ideas about how they solved the problem differently.  Shopping to a Budget would also make a great practice center on classroom computers or in a computer lab setting.


Tips: iboard has a variety of activities for the interactive whiteboard that can be purchased.  Shopping to a Budget is one of their freebie samples.


Leave a comment and share how you are using iboard: Shopping to a Budget  in your classroom.

iboard: Crossing the Water

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What it is: Crossing the Water is a great logic game for the interactive whiteboard that encourages problem solving as students try to get a family across the water safely.  Teachers can set up the activity with a set number of adults and children, students guess how many trips will have to be made to get the whole family across the water.  If there is too much weight in the boat, it will sink.


How to integrate Crossing the Water into the classroom: Crossing the Water is a fun logic and problem solving activity for students to work out.   Use Crossing the Water as an introduction mind bending activity to begin math class.  Students can work individually or in small groups to work out their strategy.  Call groups up to the whiteboard to demonstrate their solution.  Compare the solution with the way that other groups solved the problem.  Because you can change the number of adults and children in the problem, each day can present a new challenge.  Crossing the Water could also be used as a math center activity on classroom computers.


Tips: iboard has a variety of activities for the interactive whiteboard that can be purchased.  Crossing the Water is one of their freebie samples.


Leave a comment and share how you are using iboard: Crossing the Water in your classroom.

iboard: Balancing Animals

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What it is: Balancing Animals is another fun activity for your interactive whiteboard that lets students use animals as ‘non-standard’ units to weigh others.  Students can drag an animal (or animals) up to the scale, other students try to balance the scale by choosing animals that would cause the scale to be balanced.


How to integrate Balancing Animals into the classroom: Balancing Animals is a nice visual for students to use to learn about weight.  Choose an animal to weigh and drag it to the scale.  Encourage students to whisper a guess of how many animals it would take to balance the scale to their elbow buddy (the student next to them).  Groups of students can come to the board and test out their guesses.  This game could be completed on an interactive whiteboard or on classroom computers as a math center.


Tips: iboard has a variety of activities for the interactive whiteboard that can be purchased.  Balancing Animals is one of their freebie samples.


Leave a comment and share how you are using iboard: Balancing Animals in your classroom.

iboard: Visual Numbers

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What it is: Visual Numbers is another great sample application from iboard for interactive whiteboards.  Visual Numbers lets students add numbers (1-20) to the workspace above.  You can show or hide counters to represent each number.  This is a fantastic visual for students learning how to count, add, subtract, or multiply.


How to integrate iboard: Visual Numbers into the classroom: Visual Numbers will help your students to visualize number concepts.  Ask students to add all the numbers on the workspace without the spots, then reveal the spots for students to check their answers.  Put several numbers in the workspace and ask students to order numbers from smallest to largest.  Reveal the spots so that students can check their answers and visualize which numbers are smallest and which are largest.  Teach beginning multiplication skills by putting groups of numbers on the board (for example three groups of eight).  Students can visualize what 3 groups of 8 looks like by revealing the spots.  Visual Numbers is wonderful for the interactive whiteboard or as a math center on classroom computers.


Tips: iboard has a variety of activities for the interactive whiteboard that can be purchased.  Visual Numbers is one of their freebie samples.


Leave a comment and share how you are using iboard: Visual Numbers in your classroom.

iboard: Interactive Number Square

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What it is: Interactive Number Square is another great sample application from iboard for interactive whiteboards.  This number grid is versatile allowing you to hide numbers, change the color of squares, change the start number of the grid, add more or less columns and rows, and choose a step number.


How to integrate iboard: Interactive Number Square into the classroom: Interactive Number Square is a wonderful tool for teaching various number concepts.  Hide some numbers and ask students to determine which numbers are missing based on those left on the board.  Ask them if the numbers are in a pattern, go up in steps of 1, 2, 5, etc.  Create a number pattern and hide the answers.  Encourage students to keep the pattern going as long as they can and then invite students to check their answers on the Number Square.  The Number Square can be used for everything from counting, to learning multiples, to skip counting, to adding, to introducing algebraic concepts and understanding number relationships.  Students can interact with the Number Square on an interactive whiteboard or on classroom computers as a math center.


Tips: iboard has a variety of activities for the interactive whiteboard that can be purchased.  Interactive Number Square one of their freebie samples.


Leave a comment and share how you are using iboard: Interactive Number Square in your classroom.

Math Nook: Counting Money

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What it is: Math Nook is a website with a collection of great flash based math games.  Counting Money is a fun little game from this website.  In this game students man a cash register and are given a target number to give change for.  This game allows for multiple solutions.  For example, if the target is ten cents, students could give a dime, two nickels, or ten pennies.  Any of these answers would be considered correct.  Target numbers are given in number and written form (0.10 and ten cents).

How to integrate Math Nook: Counting Money into the classroom: Counting Money would make a great math center on classroom computers.  Students can take turns manning the cash register.  Keep a class tally of the high score for this game and see how high the students can go.  If you have an interactive whiteboard, students could take turns returning change.  After the student at the board gives the solution, ask students what other coin combinations would have worked to solve the problem.  You could also turn Counting Money into a whole class game by splitting your class into teams and keeping score separately.

Tips: Thanks to @cwebbtech for sending me the ad free version of this game! Update: The ad free version URL does not always work so I changed the links back to the ad supported version.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Math Nook: Counting Money  in your classroom.

Fantastic Flexible Foldables

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What it is: I love online activities that students can take part in, but because most of us don’t have the luxury of a 1 to 1 school setting, good old paper manipulatives are winners in the classroom.  Fantastic Flexible Foldables is a collection of mini math books and games that you can print out and create with your students.  You and your students can create a fraction mini-book, a factors and multiples mini-book, a fortune teller fractor game, a geometry tetraflexagon, an integer infinity square, Flippers (fraction, decimal, music), and lines trihexaflexagon.  These foldables help your students to interact with and practice math concepts that can be difficult to grasp apart from manipulatives where they can see the problems worked out.  The Flexible Foldables by Carol DeFreese are well thought out and have step by step picture instructions for folding and using these with your students.  Carol has also generously provided blank foldable templates that you can download and use to create your own foldables.

How to integrate Fantastic Flexible Foldables into the classroom: These foldable templates really are fantastic.  They are a wonderful addition to the math classroom.   Even if you don’t focus on any of the skills that Carol has created foldables for, download her blank templates and create foldables that will help your students learn difficult math concepts.  These foldables will help your students visulaize and interact with math in new ways.  This is an incredible resource and even more incredible that it is free!  Sometimes the best part of technology is the way it allows for the sharing of ideas and teaching methods… this site is proof of that!

Tips: Files on the Fantastic Foldables site are in pdf or .doc formats.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Fantastic Flexible Foldables in your classroom.

Kids Numbers

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What it is: Kids Numbers is a website from the Kids Knowit Network (they also have spelling, biology, history, etc. sites).  Kids Numbers is a free collection of resources for the math classroom.  Math skills include addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, telling time, mixed skills, geometry, and Algebra.  When you select a skill to focus on, you will get a week by week break down of skills to practice and accompanying online games and activities.  There are games to play and mini tutorials to go through that will teach the foundational skills of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  Everything on Kids Numbers is research based and designed by teachers to increase your students math abilities.

How to integrate Kids Numbers into the classroom: I love the way the mini tutorials on Kids Numbers teach students foundational math skills.  They are easy to follow along and perfect for your visual learners. Throughout the tutorial students are asked to participate by counting, sorting, etc.  There are games aligned to each skill that act as a practice area for the skill.  This is a great site to keep on your classroom computers as a math center year-round.  Students can use Kids Numbers to learn new skills, review skills that have been taught, or practice skills that they are learning in the math classroom.  Kids Numbers could be an excellent homework helper for students who are getting hung up on the basics and need a little extra help.

Tips: Kids Numbers does have advertisements on their pages.  Help your students identify the advertisements and use this as a learning opportunity about what an ad is and what they are used for.  Identify the differences between advertisement links and game and activity links on the site.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Kids Numbers in your classroom.