A Box of Goodies & Place Value

   I was so excited to come home today to a large, brown box on my doorstep full of books!

    I am working with Booksource to create teacher resources for fiction and non-fiction books. I get to read all of these great books and then decide the Big Ideas, generate Essential Questions, determine background knowledge, comprehension strategies, story structure, digital resources, and Common Core Standards met. I am getting such great ideas of how to incorporate them into my lesson plans this year. And the best part...Booksource is letting me keep all the books they send! I became familiar with Booksource through an app I use in my classroom called Classroom Organizer. Classroom Organizer is free and allows you to take a picture (with your iPhone) of the bar codes on all your classroom library books and generate a classroom check-out system. Your kiddos can each have an account and check-out and check-in books from your generated list. Click on the images below to learn more.

   So I was at Dollar Tree yesterday (surprise, surprise) and came across this card holder.

   My boys have been looking for a holder for all their Pokémon cards so I purchased one for each of them. But when I got home and took the plastic wrap off of both I realized that these were more than just Pokémon card holders. They were perfect for my classroom kiddos to practice their base ten understanding. Here is what I have been working on today...

   I made little cards to fit inside of each plastic pocket in the holder. The white cards display the three-digit number. The blue cards represent hundreds, green cards tens, and yellow cards ones. My kiddos can build the number on the white cards two ways.

with base ten pieces

and place value.

   I put two plastic labels, that stick to the inside front cover, to hold all of the pieces and keep the white three-digit numbers in the plastic covers. I found these at Michaels for cheap, but Lakeshore Learning has a bunch in all sizes and shapes. Tomorrow I am making a trip back to Dollar Tree to pick up three more for my classroom kiddos and two for my own kiddos. Their Pokémon cards can wait on the shelf one more night.