100 Charts the K Way

When I get a new group of kindergarteners in September, most of them are still working to understand the difference between a letter and a number. So imagine their faces when I hand them a 100 chart for the first time. 100 charts can be very overwhelming for five-year-olds unless they're exposed to them consistently. I love using 100 charts to teach an assortment of objectives like patterns and money in addition to numeracy.

I like to introduce my students to 100 charts early in the year. It obviously helps with with number recognition and counting, but what I love most is that it also gives them a visual of the relationship numbers have.

1. I start with 100 chart puzzles. To create these I print a 100 chart on colored card stock, laminate, and cut. I cut different patterns based on the color of the card stock. That makes it easy to keep the correct pieces together. Some are in predictable horizontal and vertical patterns, some are just cray.

They don't even realize how much they are learning with these. As they get more used to them they notice more things about the numbers as they put the puzzles together. These are easy to make and are a great activity to use for early finishers.

2. This is my favorite interactive 100 chart to use on the smart board.  I use this for a lot of lessons, but especially when we learn how to count by fives and tens. It attaches a visual to the numbers they are counting and helps them notice the patterns.

http://www.abcya.com/interactive_100_number_chart.htm

3. I got this 100 mat for the floor last year.

We love this thing! The possibilities with this are endless, but here are some of our favorites:

Roll the dice, find the number (I would change out the numbers on the dice with paper)

Roll the dice, add, and find the number

Use their bodies or a game piece to move through the mat. Roll the dice and move that many spaces. Say and write the number you land on.

Roll a number, go to the number, say what is one more and one less than your number.

4. I make this blank 100 chart on the floor, give students number cards, and let them go to town. At first I don't give them any rules to follow for placement of numbers, I just observe their work. Then we'll start with 1-10, then 1-20, etc. We work up to being able to place the cards from 1-100 in the grid and by the end of the year we are even timing it to see how fast we can get! Very fun!

5. For the first time this year, I also used 100 charts to teach money. Yes, money!

Here we go...

Simply attaching each coin to their value on the chart.

THEN we used it to count mixed sets of coins. They know that a nickel is 5 cents so it goes on the 5. Since pennies are each 1 cent, they will each go on top of one number and they count as they go.

Loved, loved, loved this, and so did they!