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.

You may also like these SCRATTLE products:

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.

You may also like these literacy centers: