The One with Bottle Caps

I have been saving the bottle caps off my water for awhile now. 

 Last week I finally sat down and created a game with them.

Thank you Pinterest!

I used these bright colored labels that I had on hand.  They fit perfectly onto the bottle caps.

I put multiplication facts on the outside.

And products on the inside.

I still need to create a cute container to put them all in.

The idea for this game is that students can practice their multiplication facts whenever they finish an assignment early or as a center. 

I'm going to put a timer in the container with the bottle caps.  The challenge will be to correctly answer as many as you can in one minute.

I also plan to make a set of addition and subtraction for a few of my lower level students.

I've seen lots of ideas on Pinterest for ways to use bottle caps for both literacy and math.  I will probably be making more games as I collect more bottle caps.

The One With Skip Counting

Do your students struggle with their multiplication facts or skip counting?

My students struggle with certain facts - sixes are especially hard for them.

Last week when it was time to line up for lunch I decided to try something new.  I was pleasantly surprised when my students LOVED it and asked to do it every time we line up.

We decided to skip count by six as we lined up. 

I began by saying 6.

I then randomly selected a student.  That student gave the next number and then lined up.  In this case the student said 12.

We continued this until all 27 students were lined up.  

One of the students pointed out that we just did all the multiplication facts of six up to 28.

They were pretty proud of themselves.

I was pretty proud of them.

We will continue to skip count by 6 until we can do it without even thinking about it and then we will move on to a new number.