Making Number Lines Come Alive- One of My Favorite Things

By far our calendar routine is my favorite part of the day. Since I have a little more freedom this year, I decided to try something my mentor teacher introduce me to it when I student taught first grade. However, it was not used quite to the extent I have made it this year. I have never seen or used it since. It is all about making a number line come alive!!! Our classroom number line will not just be used for keeping track of the number of days we have been in school or practicing addition and subtraction. I am not saying those skills are not important. Our number line is going to be so alive with knowledge we will be referring back to it all year even when multiplication and division come around at the end of the year. If I kept them until they were fourth graders we would still be using it. It is that handy!

Meet our ever growing number line!

How are we making it come alive?
Every day after we complete our calendar routine we add a number to our number line to keep track of our days in school.
I show the number then ask "How can you get to this number?"  During the first week it was "What can we count by to get to this number?" So right away when we are building our number line we began practicing counting by 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, 10s, 11s, and yes 12s is built into our routine.

Once we discover the different ways we can get to a number we use a symbol to represent it.  Note: since we can get to any number by counting by 1s, 1 does not have a symbol. Every other number does. For example we represent 2 with two matching dots as they are a pair. 4 is a square for its four sides. 7 is a rainbow for the seven colors it has.

The symbols get taped right on the number so pretty soon it starts looking like this.

We also tie in money to it so every time we reach an amount that a coin or dollar is worth that gets taped there too.

Now you can make your number line come alive too with my newest packet.

It includes everything you need to make your number line do so. Click here to check it out.

My students don't know it yet and yours won't either, but they are creating a number line that shows odd and even numbers, addition and subtraction facts, prime and composite numbers, multiplication and division facts, factors for each number. That is on top of what they do see: what numbers you use when you count by a certain number, addition facts, and money values.

I am currently working on a packet of activities to go with the number line to make it even a greater math tool.

Have a great week!