The Queen of Ten

I read a FANTASTIC math book this summer called Number Sense Routines.

It is full of great ideas to incorporate into your math time/ meeting time. One idea she wrote about being the Queen of Ten. My friend, who teaches first grade across the hall is the Queen of 10 for my class. I am the Queen of Ten for her class.

The class knows we always visit on a day that is a multiple of ten. At any point during the day, we go flying into the other person's classroom, and the group immediately gets up and into a circle for math activities from the Queen.

My friend is much funnier than I am. The kids yell out that she's Mrs. Mead, and she denies it...which they love. The queen is so clumsy that she is always dropping her cube stick, and the group help to put it back together again.

The stick is made of 5 yellow and five blue cubes.

We started with the cube stick, but as you can see below, we keep adding different things that have to do with math and the number ten.

For example, of the 40th day we challenged the class to make a pattern design with 40 pattern blocks.
We often do movement activities that focus on groups of ten. Sometimes we may ask them if they can figure out what day we will come on the next visit.

We do a lot of counting around the circle by 10's, 5's, backward, etc. This is a very simple activity and the kids and parents LOVE it. Today was the 80th day of school. The Queen of Ten came for a visit! We figured out that it is only 20 more days until the 100th day!!!!!!!!!

The Queen of 10 had us figure out the missing numbers from her cube stick. 3+- =10, 6+-=10 and 1+_=10

She gave a special homework assignment to do 80 things with the number 80.

She had us count by tens with a math tool called an abacus.