Spring Math Centers: Whimsical Recipes

In March, as we all impatiently waited for spring to arrive, I brought a huge bag of silk flowers to the classroom for the kids to explore. With snow on the ground and colder than average temperatures outside, we had colorful little reminders inside that spring *should* soon be on its way.

Initially, my idea for the flowers was to sort by color and create rainbow designs and patterns, but my students had different ideas... and began cooking with them in the play kitchen area one day during yet another indoor recess. They made a colorful mess of flowers filling every pot, pan and cup available. The kids served up flower tea, flower muffins, flower cake, flower pie, flower pizza and much more! My students became a little obsessed with the flower cooking so I began exploring how I could sneak in a little play-based math practice. 

At first, I scribbled some quick Flower Pie recipes on scrap paper with markers and showed them how they could record their own recipes by drawing pictures.

Before I knew it, students were creating their own recipes, drawing their pie creations, talking about numbers and making comparisons all on their own!

The following weekend, I sat down and created this huge pack (there are over 100 pages!) of play-based math activities using silk flowers and other materials that can easily be found at the Dollar Tree (or maybe even things you already have in your own kitchen at home or supply closet at school)!  I introduced the activities a few weeks ago and they've been a huge hit.

Contents

Since I have such a wide range of ages and abilities in my own classroom, I created activities that are easily differentiated and enticing to students between Preschool and Kindergarten age.The simplest activities focus on visual perception and include a sort by color or size activity with printable vases for sorting...

... and many activities that focus on visual perception and copying skills.

There are over 50 different recipe cards that focus on counting and creating sets of up to 10 items.  Recipe cards for quantities 1-5 and 5-10 are included for flower pie, flower pizza and flower ice cream!

Several three-dimensional printables are included which require some simple assembly. Sorting 'vases' for sorting by color, size and creating sets up to 10 are included. Simply print, cut the page in half along the dotted line, roll into a tube and tape the edge where marked. Along with the Flower Ice Cream activity, I've included a template for an ice cream cone. Simply print, cut around the edge of the template, roll into a cone shape and tape or glue the edge where marked.

Each activity also has a 'make your own' option (in color or black and white) where students can fill in the numerals to create their own recipes, place the flowers on or draw a picture of their recipe.

Materials

You'll need to purchase an assortment of silk flowers and some inexpensive props to go with the activities. Silk flowers can be found relatively cheaply at the Dollar Tree; look for stems that have smaller flowers with many blooms for the counting activities. You'll need the following colors: pink, red, orange, yellow, blue, purple and white. Blue flowers were the most difficult to find, but with a little searching I was able to find enough.  I bought about 2 stems of flowers for each color spending between $12-14. Leave the flowers on the stems for the color, size and counting vases activities; remove the flowers from the stem for the recipe card activities.

Depending on which activities you want to do with your group, you might need a pie pan, a pizza pan, a muffin tin with 6 spaces and a muffin tin with 12 spaces; I found everything except the 12 space muffin tin at the Dollar Tree. I think that I purchased my 12 space muffin tin from a thrift store for less than $2.

Lastly, I made a pie crust and pizza crust for my activities out of an old tan sweater by tracing my pan and cutting out a circle. If you don't have an old tan sweater (who knows why I had it laying around!) you could use tan felt or fleece from the fabric store (the edges of these fabrics will not fray and do not need to be hemmed); take your pan to the store with you so you know exactly how much to buy.

I also made this lattice-top crust (completely optional!) for my activity by cutting a second circle into 1/4-1/2" strips, arranging them in a crisscross, over/under pattern and hot gluing where the strips overlapped.

Check out this YouTube video for instructions on how to make a lattice-top crust design:

Prep

Most of the material prep is pretty simple. Just print, laminate and cut. If you print the recipe cards as they are, most of them are 1/2 a page (2 per page). I found that I preferred most of them smaller and adjusted my print settings to include two pages per sheet (4 cards per page); printing the cards smaller also saves on supplies including ink, card stock and lamination!

If you're not sure how to adjust the print size to two pages per sheet, this video by 3rdGrThoughts explains it well:

   

Craft Store Score: Ten Frame Box

(affiliate links included for your convenience)

Last year, on one of my frequent strolls through the craft store, I found this plain little plastic box in the beading aisle (I don't even bead, so I'm not sure why I was even in this aisle in the first place!).

Ten Frame Box

Most people would be rather unimpressed with this little plastic craft supply storage, but I'm positive any teacher of young children will notice immediately why I was so enamored by it... It has 10 pace and is a real-life hands-on ten frame! Perfectly aligned with common core just as it is! (And I didn't have to make it myself, modify it or pay a ton of money for it at a teacher store!)

I promptly bought one of these magnificent little boxes and tested it out in in my classroom. My students absolutely loved counting little objects into the box and it worked perfectly for my students who struggled with fine motor challenges - the items stay in their spaces baring completely knocking the entire box off of the table!

Ten Box Counting

I did end up modifying the box just a tiny bit by using a little hot glue to affix the dividers securely in the box, but otherwise, it was perfect just as it is!

Initially, I kept the box in my circle time basket and had each of my preschoolers (this was a special education preschool classroom) choose a type of manipulative to count into the box to practice the number of the day. Each student took their turn while their peers practiced waiting, watching and listening to the students before him/her. The repetition and hands-on nature of this activity were perfect to reinforce counting, one-to-one correspondence, left-to-right object placement, order, organization, active looking and listening and more!

A colleague observed the little box in action and asked to borrow it to see if her students responded as well as mine had. I dutifully lent it to her, and never saw it again! Her students loved it just as much (maybe even more) than mine did. I bought another box and it too disappeared after lending it to another teacher in my building. I'm now on to my third or fourth box...

Recently, in my new classroom, I got brought the box out again and made some ten frame cards that fit almost perfectly under the box. The cards show the numeral and number word on the left and indicate which boxes should be filled to create the proper quantity.

I set it up as one of our Math works for March... I'll be changing out the manipulatives for Easter next week!

March Math Work

You can get a FREE set of ten frame cards HERE if you'd like to try them out in your classroom.

The actual box that I used can be found at Michaels Stores or online HERE

Amazon has similar pack of three Bead Boxes that are a little smaller in size (maybe easier to store if you need more than one of them).

Ten Frame Math Center

Easter Math Center FREEBIE!

(Affiliate links included for your convenience.)

My students loved the self-checking St. Patrick's Day clip cards that I made a couple of weeks ago - so much that I made another set for Easter!

The set includes clip-cards for numbers 1-10 and have been carefully designed to be printed double-sided to create a self-checking center. 

I absolutely LOVE that my students can check their own work - and they love it too! I've put them up in my TpT store as a FREEBIE! 

Prep for this center is pretty easy - all you need to do is print (double-sided if you want them to be self-checking), laminate & cut. You'll need some kind of clips for students to mark the number - you could even use a dry erase marker or crayon if you wanted to! 

Skills: one-to-one correspondence, matching set of objects to numerals, counting to answer "how many?"

Aligned with Common Core standards: K.CC.A.1, K.CC.B.4, K.CC.B.5