In first grade, fact families are a big deal. We are all about playing around with numbers to see the different relationships that form.

Our favorite way to practice fact families is through centers! I started doing math centers this past fall after attending an SDE conference. I went to Reagan Tunstall’s session on guided math groups and fell in love! We don’t get to centers every day, unfortunately, but they BEG for them! Sometimes we even choose to do math centers instead of indoor recess. (My kids are crazy…crazy awesome!)

ANYWAY. Back to fact families. Here are some of our favorite centers to practice those pesky fact families!

I love Three Corner! Basically, it’s a fact family triangle. The sum or whole is always on the top in purple and the parts or addends are on the bottom in blue. We switch up covering up either the part or the whole to practice! I do this whole group as a warm up a lot of the time under my document camera. We use them in a center and the kids quiz each other. This builds great number sense!

We always use dice in our room. Here kiddos would roll two dice for the two parts, then write down the whole. Then we would write the fact family to match. This page is from Brown Bag Teacher.

In my small group, we practiced moving numbers around with playing cards. This concrete moving of the numbers really helped my lower students see how the numbers related to each other. The kiddos practiced writing the related facts as we moved them around.

This is the same idea as the triangles above, but this time its our turn to create the facts. We would roll a dice twice and write the two numbers on the bottom part of the triangle (blue). We then add then numbers together to find the sum and write it at the top (green). It’s then time to write out the fact family in the middle! I love that they are dry erase!

We LOVE the iPod center. Here are two of our favorite games. They aren’t exactly “fact family” practice, but simple addition and subtraction practice. 

One fun app is Math Duel. Two students (or teams) compete to answer the question. The kiddos get really into this game!

Math Bingo is by ABCya and is super fun! You figure out the math fact, then find the answer. Once you answer correctly, you get a little bug on that space. When you reach bingo, you get to play a game with the bugs. We love it!

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​How do you practice fact families in your room? Any other fun tips you can share?

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Oh my goodness, friends, I just had the BEST weekend!

Have you ever met people that you hold in high regard? Like, in your eyes, they are superstars? Did you not only meet these people, but get to talk with them? Sit down, and have lunch with them? Take pictures with them? BECOME FRIENDS WITH THEM?!?

Well. I did. And it was FANTASTIC.

WHERE?!? are you asking? I was fortunate enough to attend the Nashville TPT Meet Up! Because I am just starting my TPT journey, I wasn’t sure if I should attend, but I am SO glad that I did! I had seen someone post about a Nashville meet up in the TPT forums and decided to add my email address to get more information. I didn’t really hear anything for a while, but then was invited to a Facebook group where the details eventually got hashed out.

Although I don’t live in Nashville anymore, my parents do, so I was able to come spend the night with them and then head on to the meet up. Actually, a childhood friend and neighbor (we lived three houses down from each other!) is a TPT seller, so we were able to ride together. It was so fun getting caught up with her! Kayla from All Things Third is so sweet – you should definitely check out her TPT store. ;) I was so thankful to ride together, because this was SO out of my comfort zone.

Once we arrived at the restaurant, I turned to open the door, and who did I see?? THE BROWN BAG TEACHER! I was so awkward. She said, “Hi, I’m Kate!” and I responded, “I know who you are!” Bless. Could I be any worse? We laughed that off, thankfully, and found our way to our room. You guys, Ashley had done so much to make this a fun day! We walked into the room and there was a sign in area, a drawing for door-prizes, appetizers, and then goodies at each place setting.

After signing in, I found a group and stuck to it. I met Greg Smedley-Warren from Kindergarten Smorgasboard and Jen Hartmann from Jen Hart Design right away! Talk about more celebrities in the teacher world! I love both of their work! Kristy and Misty from Teaching Times 2 came over and I got to know them a little bit.

When it was time to eat, we sat at tables that sat eight people. Our table included Kayla, Greg, Jen, Kristy, Misty, Dana, Carmen, and myself. We were at a wonderful Italian restaurant and ate ‘family style.’ It was so fun just sitting around, talking to these great people! Although I was super nervous to meet everyone at first, as time went on, they became more like friends just hanging out. I wish there was a way for me to have spent more time with everyone there, but time didn’t allow for that.

We each got some pretty great swag, too! We got a TPT bag and hand sanitizer, several pens from people there, a guitar shaped cookie (yay for music city) from the Puffy Muffin, Kindergarten Smorgasbord goodies (a draw string backpack, pen, lanyard, keychain, etc.), and GoNoodle even gave us a poster and folder. WHOAH! Jen designed a super cute logo for us and Dana made t-shirts!

Are YOU interested in going to a meet up? I definitely encourage you to seek out opportunities to do so! We have a Teacher Meet Up in Nashville the first weekend in June, hosted by Greg and Dana. I definitely plan on being there – I hope you can come, too! :)