You can place numbers from 1-31 and give students markers to place a marker to identify their birthdays. Discuss which number has the most birthdays, least birthdays, etc. Then you can graph the results. Love it.
You can also use the 100 chart to identify patterns, such as even numbers in red and odd in black.
Please tell me I am not the only one that just learned that numbers on the diagonal add up or subtract to number along the top?? For example, the instructor is on 19. If you minus the smaller number (1) from the bigger number (9) the answer is the number on the diagonal (8). If you go the other way from 8 on the diagonal 17 (1+7=8), 26 (2+6), 35 (3+5), 44 (4+4), 53 (5+3), etc. I had never put that together!
Here's a quick one to orientate students to the numbers. Place a treat on a square, students identify the number and get the treat.
The instructor explained that we can ask older students to create additional numbers up to 200, or even starting with any number (such as 92) it's interesting how it becomes a whole new board because students have trouble picturing it as anything but a 100 chart but it can be used for so much more. Many also find transitioning from 109 difficult and often believe it is 200 and not 210 as she showed us in her example. (check out "94" as well!)
The instructor showed us ways to use bead measures:
This idea was my favourite because you can clothes pin the number to the appropriate spot on the bead measure.
The learning carpet can also be used for geometry, and even as a clock (didn't take a picture of that!)
My favourite use was this: Assigning each letter a number and having students place it on the correct box to spell out a message. She did this as a group activity and people added letters one at a time and we tried to guess it as it was being spelled out. I think it would be good as a center with a bunch of messages to solve. You could even ask students to create their own messages for their peers to solve.
Lastly, this activity was in the hall and it was based on the book "Press Here" by Herve Tullet (check out the preview on this site) and it is a book you can write with students. It begins with an instruction "push the yellow button" and then on the next page it has a compliment at the top, then more "buttons" and an instruction. The book ends with "Do you want to do that again?" What a great idea!
