"If I win it, I'll be the Queen of Cute!"
When the second grade math class heard about the super fun game the fourth grade math class got to play, they begged to play it too. It's a simple "King/Queen of the Class" game. I made a crown out of some colorful, glittery paper I had; the winner got to keep the crown. One student wears the crown and sits on the "throne" (the stool I sit on to teach sometimes). I show a math flashcard - for second grade we did subtraction - and whoever says it first gets the crown. There's no points for winning the crown away from someone, but every time a student wins once they have the crown they get a point to represent one year of reigning as King or Queen. That point system I just thought of on the fly this morning and the kids liked it. My second graders thought if they won the crown the could be the boss of me too, so I had to remind them I was still in charge. I told them they could be King or Queen, but I was the High Supreme Ruler of the World. Can't beat that! Youngsters love to imagine, so why not incorporate it into things that can be terribly mundane...like math class?! Imagination makes everything much more fun and we're still accomplishing our goal. True, such activities are a bit more time consuming so we can't do them every day. Whenever we can, though, it's totally worth the time and effort. Seeing the kids' gigantic smiles and hearing their laughter during math class is the best thing ever!
When the second grade math class heard about the super fun game the fourth grade math class got to play, they begged to play it too. It's a simple "King/Queen of the Class" game. I made a crown out of some colorful, glittery paper I had; the winner got to keep the crown. One student wears the crown and sits on the "throne" (the stool I sit on to teach sometimes). I show a math flashcard - for second grade we did subtraction - and whoever says it first gets the crown. There's no points for winning the crown away from someone, but every time a student wins once they have the crown they get a point to represent one year of reigning as King or Queen. That point system I just thought of on the fly this morning and the kids liked it. My second graders thought if they won the crown the could be the boss of me too, so I had to remind them I was still in charge. I told them they could be King or Queen, but I was the High Supreme Ruler of the World. Can't beat that! Youngsters love to imagine, so why not incorporate it into things that can be terribly mundane...like math class?! Imagination makes everything much more fun and we're still accomplishing our goal. True, such activities are a bit more time consuming so we can't do them every day. Whenever we can, though, it's totally worth the time and effort. Seeing the kids' gigantic smiles and hearing their laughter during math class is the best thing ever!
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