Fun Fraction Book

We are up to our knees with fractions in Room 19 this week!  I ordered this awesome book Whole-y Cow! Fractions Are Fun by Taryn Souders from Scholastic awhile back. Ever since then, I've been waiting and waiting for our fraction unit to arrive so I could read it with my class. It is very silly and I know they are going to just eat.it.up! 

On each set of pages there is a situation with the cow that incorporates some sort of fraction (of a set or of a whole - halves, thirds, fourths, tenths). Then it asks questions to which there is a fractional answer. Since we are working hard on learning which number "goes on the top" and which number "goes on the bottom" I thought it would be nice to have a recording sheet for my kids to write down the fractions as we went along. We may work through it orally as a whole class first and then have the activity sheet in a center later where 3/18 of them can work on it at a time while getting a closer look at the illustrations. ; ) I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do yet, but I do know that I love bringing fun read-alouds into our math block.

Before I made this document I "googled" to see if there was already one floating out there in cyber-space. While I didn't find what I was looking for exactly...I did find a whole packet of activities the author created to accompany the book - there's some good stuff in there. Here's the link: Fractions Are Fun

Click on the link below to download my recording sheet:

Whole-y Cow! Fractions Are Fun

Another Math Printable

Power Towers Label
(click to download file in google docs)

Here's a little label to jazz up the containers you use to store the cups for your "power towers" center.  What are "power towers"?  Head on over to www.teachertipster.com and check out the video about them. I started using this idea for a math center last week and it has quickly become a class favorite for practicing math facts. They seriously L-O-V-E it. One of my toughest little kiddos even begged me to have this activity be his "daily reward" for good behavior -- usually it's 5 free minutes on the computer at the end of the day.

On the video he suggests using pringles cans, but I had an empty container (from sugar-free kool-aid) laying around that worked out perfectly. The small size dixie cups fit great and it takes up less space. One other modification I made was to write the answer to the problem inside the top rim of each cup, so they can check their answer before adding the cup to the stack. If they get one wrong they have to put it back on the bottom of the stack.