12 Days of Christmas -- Day 10

Welcome to the 10th day of Christmas giveaways. Today's gift is SCRATTLE: The Christmas Edition.

SCRATTLE is a learning center activity that combines word work with computation; individual effort with competition. As in Scrabble™, students use a set of letters to create words. 

After recording their words, they calculate each word’s score using the Scrabble™ letter values. Then they engage a friend in a battle wherein they compare their scores using >, <, and =. The student with the most >s wins the battle! (SCRAbble + baTTLE = SCRATTLE!)

SCRATTLE can be played by students with basic addition capabilities, as well as those skilled in solving mixed operations in complex equations. Three different recording sheets are included, providing instant differentiation.

Use this multi-disciplinary center activity today!  It is ready to print and go.

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12 Days of Christmas -- Day 9

On this 9th day of Christmas, my gift to you is Christmas Confections Square Puzzlers. 

Are your kiddos getting a little wound up? OK, a lot! Give them Christmas Confections Square Puzzlers and enjoy a little quiet. This activity is seriously engaging. It is differentiated, so you can use it with any grade level. The challenge with these puzzles is to reconstruct the square so that all of the images match on every interior side. Like this:

This 4 piece puzzle is the easiest and most appropriate for the youngest students. Note that the images on the inside borders match.

3 Square Puzzles are included. The 3x3 puzzle is considerably more challenging and the 4x4 square may drive you a bit daffy! But do not stress out!! When you download this product you will find a nice little clue to solving the puzzles.  You can decide whether to share that with your students or not.  Here's the 3x3 in progress:

I should warn you that there are a few, potential problems with introducing your students to square puzzlers:

• They may beg incessantly to do them.
• They may complain loudly when you ask them to put them away.
• Those lacking in stamina may become frustrated. (In my experience, this is a very small percentage of the students.)

I hope you and your students will enjoy these.

Check out these square puzzlers:

12 Days of Christmas -- Day 8

On the 8th day of Christmas, my gift to you is Merry Monkeys Antonyms Literacy Center.

Students will match monkey cards by finding antonym pairs. To add another fun dimension, invite small groups of children to use the cards in a game of Go Fish. There are 2 decks of 48 monkey cards. The decks are identical except for the background. Thus, more students can use this literacy center. Sorting the cards will be easy, too.  Merry Monkeys is CCSS aligned for grades 4 & 5. Other grade levels will love it, too.

There is a recording sheet, too, in case you want to have your students verify their learning.

An answer key and labels for your center folder are also supplied.

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12 Days of Christmas -- Day 7

On the 7th day of Christmas, my gift to you is -

Reindeer Squares are Latin Squares with a holiday theme. If you are not familiar with Latin Squares, they are square arrays of n x n rows and columns. N items fill the cells so that no item is used more than once in each row and column. In mathematics, they are used for statistical analysis.

When you use Reindeer Squares with your class, you will teach your students deductive reasoning. You could tell them that, or just let them believe you are allowing them to have lots of fun. 

Begin by demonstrating how a 3 x 3 array works.  

Give your students a 4 x 4 board along with 4 reindeer tiles each of 4 colors. Challenge them to place their tiles on the board without repeating a color in any row or column. Although someone is bound to discover that making diagonal stripes will lead to an easy solution, don't let the learning stop there. For a 3 x 3 array, there are 12 possible solutions. Dare them to find all 12. For a 4 x 4 array, there are 576 permutations!  The 7 x 7 array has 61,479,419,904,000 solutions! Now that's a challenge any bright, gifted, and/or talented child should love.

As a teacher who is dedicated to differentiated instruction, I have used Reindeer Squares successfully with 1st through 5th graders. During this exciting time of year, I find that the children will welcome this activity and commit to the task.  That's no small feat in December! 

I'm please to offer Reindeer Squares to you for free.  But, don't procrastinate.  It's only free for 48 hours.

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12 Days of Christmas -- Day 6

It's the 6th day of my

My gift today is Contraction Cookies Literacy Center.

Although it offers a hint of the holidays, this center activity is actually holiday neutral. Thus, you can use it any time of year.  (It is great for a gingerbread man unit.)

Contraction Cookies aligns specifically with ELA-Literacy.L.2.2c. However, it is appropriate for first and third grades, as well.  

Here's a peek at this fun center:

Hustle over to my TPT store to score my gift to you.  Enjoy!

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12 Days of Christmas -- Day 5

Today's 12 Days of Christmas gift is Christmas Hink Pinks, et al. These vocabulary riddles are wildly popular with teachers and students alike.  My kiddos literally beg to do more Hink Pinks!

Christmas Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, Hinkity Pinkities, and Hitinkity Pitinkities are not only great for exercising critical thinking, but are perfect for corralling some of that holiday excitement. When you share Hink Pinks, et al., with your class, you will be giving them learning disguised as fun. They will work on vocabulary, parts of speech, synonyms, rimes, making inferences, and interpreting data. That hits a lot of CCS Standards.

If you are not familiar with Hink Pinks, et al., here's an explanation of them:

You can unwrap this gift for free, but only for 48 hours.  So follow this link to my TPT store and download your copy.

Check out these Hink Pink products, too: