Freebielicious: Meet Ms. White from First Grade Blue SKies

Meet Ms. White from First Grade Blue SKies

I am super excited to be an author for Freebielicious with my amazing friends!

Let me introduce myself: I am Jennifer White, the teacher behind First Grade Blue SKies.

I am married to a great guy, Shawn...

I have three awesome kids…

Jack and Maggie….and Emma (it is impossible to get a good picture of all three at the same time…Can I get an Amen from moms of multiple kids???)

This is my 17th year to teach and I have taught Kindergarten, First, and Third. I teach in a rural, public K-12 school in Alabama. I have 16 students this year, and some are kids I taught from last year when I was in Kindergarten! (I wish looping was a possibility every year for me!)

This is a picture of me in First Grade:

I love to read and watch British mysteries…I am a whodunit kind of girl.

(insert Elementary, BBC's Sherlock, and Masterpiece Mystery…not to mention Poirot, Marple, Nero Wolfe, and Dave Robicheaux) I think I may have a problem!

My gift to you, since you've hung in there all the way to the end hearing about my somewhat dull life, is a freebie and tips for playing Heads or Tails (from Investigations) where kids use pennies to explore number combinations.

Use paper plates when kids are dropping their pennies to prevent them from falling off their desks.

Use containers from the Dollar Store to have your pennies divided up already so that any time you want to play the game, the pennies are already in groups of ten. You can have kids take out pennies to change the amount or add additional pennies to make a larger number.

This is a picture of the label of the containers that I found that are perfect for the penny storage

(they are from Dollar Tree)

Here is a recording page to change things up a bit from the norm…directions are included, so even if you don't use Investigations, it will work for you (and you can choose any number to explore the combinations with, so it can work k-2).