Kinesthetic Math

I wanted to do something that was fun and engaging, yet we could do a math review at the same time!

First I picked out the most important aspects of our entire math 5th Grade Core. Then I tried to think of as many kinesthetic activities I could think of. Here is what I came up with:

#1 I bough window markers at Target and we wrote on the windows! How cool is that?
#2 I made a game on a powerpoint. It included a lot of those "brain energizers" that we hear about all the time. I had a lot of standing up and sitting down. Ours was on prime vs composite, prime factorization, LCM, and GCF.
#3 Play dough! You can't go wrong with play dough. The students would make the numbers out of play dough. We did long division with decimals... much more fun with play dough.
# 4 Sidewalk chalk! After approval from my principal, we had the go to do our math outside in the sun with colorful chalk. It doesn't get better than that!
#5 Shaving Cream! I saved this one for my last one because I knew the kids would love it! It actually cleans the desk too!
#6 This one only applies if you have ordered pairs in your curriculum, but we did this (Angry Birds graphing). Then they created their own picture and wrote down the points so another friend could graph their drawing.
#7 I also had a your choice day where the students could choose what they wanted to do out of a few options (window markers and play dough)


I kept every day group work oriented. I had several students tell me "I didn't remember how to do that and my neighbor taught me." I am a big believer in group work, but especially a big believer during review time.

I also kept order by having the same routine we always have for math. We always have a self-start round of inquiry (launch, explore, debrief) where the students teach their peers. Then they had to work in their group or with their partner well before they could earn the activity. Some days in the beginning there were groups that did not earn their activity because they were not working hard. I also had a rule that if they wrote anything besides what they were supposed to be doing they were kicked out and had to do a worksheet. I never had a kid do a worksheet, but they were ready for them!

I love this! I am hoping my end of year math scores reflect how hard we worked!