Math Camp {Summer with Pizzazz!}

 These were a few of my lovely "Middle School" kids that took place in my first annual Math Camp. I dedicated two months of the summer to building and shaping students to better prepare them for the coming school year. I spent June with Elementary ages and July with Middle and High Schoolers.

And might I add.... IT WAS A BLAST!!!

Far more fun than I anticipated! And if you ask any of the students, they had fun too!

Here's some of the things we did this summer: (of course each grade level varied on the content)

Elementary:

• Math Horse (with math facts)
• Tangram puzzles to build problem solving
• Math fact beach ball
• Fraction scavenger hunts
• Dice games to build operational skills (highly recommend the game I foung called "Salamander Shootout" - this also worked with my middle school kids)
• And of course, the ever popular Fact Race game

 Middle/High School:

• Checkers problem solving puzzle (found at Dr. Mikes games for kids)
• Fractions, decimals & percents scavenger hunt and race game
• Math Maze
• Honeycomb magic square
• Marcy Cook's Double tiles and Order of Operation tiles
• Math horse with fractions
• Nerf gun graphing
• Factoring (algebra review)
• Formulas (algebra review)
• Radicals and Polynomials (algebra review)

I cannot wait until next summer to elaborate more on what I did and to have more students take part in making their summer meaningful!!! Here's to school starting in a couple weeks! 

A new horizon

Summer is in full swing here and I am going to feature some things that are not just for middle school on here as I am piloting a program at my school this summer for students in grades 3 - high school. It is awesome so far!!!

The program I am piloting is Math Camp. Yeah, I know, sounds like math is trying to be fun... well, it is!!! I've dedicated the month of June to elementary school students and have it broken into two two-week sessions. Each class is an hour and a half long and we've focused on mastering math facts, decoding word problems, and above all gaining confidence in our mathematical skills and learning that math is indeed fun!

One of the students' favorite game is the Fact Ball. I took a beach ball and wrote math facts all over the ball in wet erase marker. This allows me to be able to change the facts each day and for each level. We play "hot potatoe" with it and take turns yelling "STOP!" Whoever has the ball when stop is yelled has to answer the fact that is underneath their right hand. It's been a lot of fun so far.

Look for some other fun games that you can also modify for your students during the school year!

I am also working on putting ALL (like over a hundred) math labs that I've created over the past couple of years together in a book to sell in the near future. I'll be promoting it and featuring it on the blog a little later, so keep your eyes peeled!

What fun things are YOU doing this summer???