Wisdom Wednesday: Tens and Ones Activities + Free Printables!

A friend is going through the Student Teaching process right now, and it's reminding me exactly what I was going through a year ago! I've looked back on some of the stuff I did and am a little sad I won't be able to use some of the activities in my current job.

So I wanted to share them here! I have five activities (including 3 printables) that can be performed at home or in classrooms as part of a math center. These were used in a first grade classroom.

The first is a Tens and Ones activity using base blocks. The children match the number of tens blocks and ones blocks to the number and write the number of tens and ones. The other part is to identify the tens blocks given and determine the number.

If you draw dots on a paper and laminate them, children can practice circling the groups of ten, and determining the number of dots by counting the groups of tens and remaining ones.

The second printable is a Tens and Ones activity with confetti (or other small papers/stickers). They will glue the number of tens and ones in each box (so for the number 54, they would put 5 pieces in the tens box and 4 pieces in the ones).

You can also use Q-Tips to teach how to groups tens (as well as the concept that 10 items is 1 GROUP of tens.

The final activity is a Tens and ones activity with dice. They will roll a pair of dice and use one number as the tens and the other as the ones. This worked best when we used a red one for the tens and a white one for the ones, to help reinforce the distinction.

I hope these help you either at home or at school!

The Factor Tree

When you start to try different products at home to give reviews and spread the word about them, it can be either feast or famine! There can be a lot of wait time to get something to try, then you're trying multiple products at once and trying to keep up with telling others about it and reporting back to the companies.

This is one of my busiest times! Not only have I been able to review Tom's of Maine Wicked Fresh toothpaste, and a Just Dance 2 Houseparty, but now I get to have my kids try out The Factor Tree.



When I heard about The Factor Tree, I was excited to try it out! I am both a student learning to become a teacher, and a mother of young children who are in school. Anything that could help them learn math is an asset! They also love to use the computer so I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for them to learn and for me to be able to track their progress.

Overall, I was disappointed. Though I have clicked around the website, I have not seen anything that would help entice children in. The set up seems to be in test format where students are able to take "real" tests and "practice" tests and the scores are given emailed to parents. Though I do think that the way the scores are tracked could be helpful, since they are listed based on the concepts being tested, I do not think this format will help my children learn.

It is not interesting to them. Though they get to be on the computer, just typing in what time is displayed or filling in the blanks of math problems is boring and by question 20 they are more than "over" the whole experience.

I think the concept is wonderful and think that with some improvements it could be something that would be wonderful for both parents and educators to use when working with children, but as it is I do not think it is something I will continue to use past the free trial.

Would you like to try it and see how you feel? Use "BZZAGENT" for a 2-week trial at thefactortree.com and let me know what you think!