Printer Woes, Numbers Stories, and a FREEBIE too!

This week I have had trouble with my printer at school (as in IT WILL NOT PRINT!). I have turned it in to our technical maintenance team and am "patiently" waiting for them to fix the problem. :)  Meanwhile, it has put a kink in my lesson plans (especially math), so today I decided to try something a little different. Since I couldn't print the activity pages for my original lesson, I decide to give my kinders a little more practice with number stories (aka word problems). 

First, we did several practice stories on the SMART Board together. I would make up the stories, the kiddos would read the stories out loud (great reading practice, by the way), and then I would call volunteers to the board to help solve the number stories. The first thing that we would do after reading the story is illustrate what the story told us. In order to do this, students had to determine whether it was a "putting together" (addition) story or a "taking away" (subtraction) story. I was VERY proud of how well my kinders were able to do this, especially my EL students. After the picture had been drawn, another volunteer would come up and write the equation to match the picture and story. Like I said before, I am VERY proud of how well my kiddos were able to do this. :) 

After we did several examples like this , I decided to let them try and create their own number stories. 

Here is one example:

(I just love her cats, don't you?)

I was so inspired by my kiddos excitement over number stories that I came home and made an Easter-themed number stories pack to share with you! Just follow the link below to my TPT store to grab a copy! All I ask is that you follow my store if you don't already and leave me some feedback. :) 

Click HERE to grab your copy

Hope y'all have a FANTASTIC rest of the week! Only three more days until my maternity leave begins! WHOOP! WHOOP!