Hawaii is a popular place, and with summer approaching it would be fun to have a themed puzzles approach to centers. Pleasant thoughts! Children and adults enjoy thinking about nice areas. This free instant download is available at the next link:
Hawaii-activities-and-puzzles-by-Wise-Owl-Factory
I hope some teachers and parents find this helpful. At least it will offer some challenge for grades one and two. I would suggest using this toward the end of grade one if you teach first grade. Next are sample page images to view before you might decide to print. It is mostly in color, so set the printer to “use less ink” or print in grayscale depending on your printer options. I realize many schools do not allow color printing. Some of the pages could be placed in plastic sleeves for use with dry-erase markers. Some could be laminated for use again and again — but keep the puzzle pieces in an envelope for safe keeping.
Read the room is an active approach for a reading center. The left side of the page is cut apart and displayed around the room for children to find. When they match a picture, they write the word on their recording sheet. The right side of the page is cut out in one section as the worksheet for the children. This is one of the pages with a black and white printing option.
Many teachers cleverly inspire children to read the room by using usually homemade wands with stars or ribbons added. Children point to the words and then write. Most children love to use wands and when do they get such an opportunity?
Count and graph for the math center — here, the children count each image for the totals. Then, they are to find the range, median, and mode. The range is the highest number minus the lowest number of image types. The median is the middle number in a particular set, and the mode is the number found most often.
When the numbers are written out lowest to highest, what is the middle number? Cross off one at each end until the middle is found such as 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7 to easily see the median is 5. Then, since there are two of number 6, so that is the mode for this puzzle.
Skip counting puzzles seem easy, however, they do help children learn or organize their math thinking and prepare for learning multiplication. What do the children notice? How do the numbers correspond to the multiplication chart? Even if they simply arrange the puzzle looking at the picture, they can’t help but see skip counting is actually multiplication.
There are four Sudoku puzzles in the PDF, and this is the most difficult level included. This should challenge a few children!
Robot Skip Counting by ones, fives, and tens matched with multiplication facts Easel and Google Slides Freebie
