Math Tubs in Kindergarten: Common Core Catch up. More or Less, comparing attributes and positional words

Since positional words kind of sneak their way in with shapes, I decided to pull out this little game. Mister Mouse is a cute little game that just has the children put their bear on the picture of what they draw from the stack - like the mouse may be under the pumpkin, or above the pumpkin.

Jack be Nimble is a game working with matching sets.

And I am thinking about using this game I found a long time ago, for counting. When they land on a number they have to count to that number.

Since Comparing Attributes is this week, I like to start with sorting. I think I will sort things by color in a couple groups, like boats and bears. Then the next day I will have the students sort by shape using my spaceships and then on the third day I will have them sort by size. After they have this mastered, I will introduce these leaves to sort I use baskets for the students to place these tags in front of and they sort together as a team.

The more or less game is a favorite of mine to teach and for the students to play. They LOVE it, and it is so simple. All you need is a mat (piece of felt), tape down the middle, unifix cubes and a cube with the words more and the word less on it. Each student has a stick of 10 unifix cubes and they place it on their laps. They say together, "One, two, three, break, one, two, three, show" and they place their pieces on the board. Each child says what they have. "I have more, I have less" and then the person with less rolls the dice. What ever word it lands on wins all the cubes on the board. And they play again. When they are all out of cubes or out of time, they lay all that they have on the board and say "I have more, I have less" And the one with less rolls and that roll determines who wins the games.

One of the new skills in Common Core is to count objects and to record the number. So I decided to tie in shapes with this skill. I filled brown bags with various shapes and made a check sheet that I will change each day. Each bag has a label on it so the students will know how which bags they have counted. Here is the sheet that I made up to go with this activity. I hope this makes sense??