My Pumpkin Pie Fractions

So happy it is finally Saturday!
But not happy I was **wide** awake at 5:30 and outta my comfy bed at 6:30 because I couldn’t fit myself back to sleep!
Laundry folded…towels folded…sheets in the wash…pinterest stalked…
contemplating a trip to Kohl’s since they are open already.
Why is it that during the week I have to **fight** myself awake?!
Yesterday evening I stayed at school until 6.
On a Friday?!  Yep.
My stacks of “need to be hung up in the hallway work” was drivin’ me cahh-razzzyy.
I got 4 of our hard work activities hung up for display!
Granted, I don’t have titles up with them yet.
But…they are up!
And also picked up my very messy, too busy classroom.
I think a little clutter once in awhile means that there is some real learning going on!
Or maybe just the fact that the teacher didn’t have time to put anything away:)
We have been learning about fractions and taking our sweet time 
since we are right where we should be with my districts pacing guide.  
And I have already “pre-taught” double-digit addition/subtraction
before the lovely pacing guide has me.  Why not?!
My kiddos are doing it weekly for homework.
I’m hoping all of this practice with help us grasp regrouping/borrowing easier!
While laying in bed the other night (Is that weird that I plan in my head before bed?!),
I was thinking of a fun, yet we are *really learning our objective* fraction activity.
I’ve done the whole pizza fractions and considered doing an ice cream one, 
but this time of year I thought that might be a little silly in our hallway.
I came up with a little “My Pumpkin Pie” activity!
(We also wrote about how to make pumpkin pie in writing.)
Due to time limits and my wait time due to talking:), we did split this up into two days.
We used little plates (I decided coloring a big plate would take too long!)
Since this idea came to me the **night** before I did it, I did not pre-draw the lines for kiddos.
I simply taught them to fold the plate to create their choice of either 4 pieces or 8 pieces.
It was a little hard for a few, I don’t listen very well kiddos.
For the most part, everyone did a really good job.  
Drawing the straight lines with pencils was another story:)
I walked around and traced over all the pencil lines with a sharpie.
We then colored our pie and added a ring of brown for the crust!
I didn’t have my kiddos color the pieces they “would eat.”
They left them white to help them remember what pieces to cut off.
Once cut off, we then colored them.
This worked pretty well!  Only a few kiddos that made a mistake with cutting.
We then pre-wrote our math problem on scratch paper.
The following day we wrote it on the yellow paper.
(I kept meaning to get a pretty template made up and copies made. But it didn’t happen.)
So I quickly cut yellow sheets I had stashed away.
I thought I had my fun, bright colored sheets with lines (at Walgreens, it is amazing!)
But no such luck, all out from last year!
The above is the **template format** that I gave my kiddos.
I then decided last minute, of course, that we needed a pie pan under our pie!
So I quickly cut some tin foil.
We added some cotton balls for our whip cream.  
And oh boy, was it hilarious to see these kiddos get it stuck to their fingers. 
I really just sat back and smirked:)
Not all of us succeeded with writing neatly with no lines, but I think its good practice!
This kiddo has no tin foil, because he decided to glue his pie down before putting the foil!
I also tried to teach them to cut the pie pieces out to keep the black lines to allow them to see the actual fraction piece that they **ate**.
I really don’t have much wall space that I can easily just staple into, 
so I stuck our lovely pies up high!
I found the extra big leaf border at Target on clearance from ArtSkills.
I normally would put paper behind it, but I’ve found kids in the hallway tear it and it doesn’t last. 
So why bother?
We also made these lovely lil’ turkeys from “The First Grade Fanatics.”
I needed a turkey project that was fast this year and this worked prefect!
Am I the only one that doesn’t like to do the **same** turkey craft every year?
I had a bunch of card stock I bought to use with my new, still in its box cricut.
My “copy lady” is great and will make copies on anything I give her.
So I pre-cut the paper so kids didn’t have to trace!
I was very indecisive on which packets of papers to use, so I picked 11 different colors.

I had already glued/stapled our “Don’t eat me!” turkey stories to the
teal, purple, and blue paper a few days ago.  
And really dislike how it looks with our colorful turkeys, but…..I left it. 
I’ve been learning not to want everything to be **so perfect**.
Our 3rd grade friends next door (we share connecting wall space), 
will be making the same turkeys to make one display all together.
If you are looking for any baby gifts, 
check out these adorable items my sister purchased off of etsy for our friend.
It was very decently priced, and shipped fast!

Ash also made these lollipops out of onesies and baby spoons!
She got the idea off of etsy and was going to purchase them through there.
But I told her that would be silly because obviously it isn’t too hard.  Just rollin’!
I am proud to say, she did them all on her own:)  
Her craftiness only goes so far and I figured I’d be doing it all.
But I didn’t touch one piece of it!


4 Comments

  2. WHAT grade do you teach again??? Our first grade standards do not cover fractions anymore but I miss them. LOVE your idea! How fun! The cotton ball cracked me up!
    I stayed until 6:15 last night doing bulletin boards, too. They're not finished but they have "snow" and new borders up so I can work on them after the break.
    Happy Saturday!
    A Teeny Tiny Teacher

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