Factors, Multiples, Prime Numbers-Oh My!

Happy Saturday! Anyone else experiencing abnormal heat this week/weekend? Where did my fall weather go? I am just thankful my husband was smart and decided not to take the air conditioner out of our bedroom window yet. Alright-no more weather complaints...I'm excited to link up with my friend Joanne at Head over Heels for Teaching for her linky, expecially since I missed it last week!

I currently have a student teacher, she is doing a wonderful job, but because she is with us in the room I keep forgetting to take pictures of our projects. This coming week she is teaching everything (It is her last full week with me,) so I will try to remember to take pictures to share with you.

This past week my students learned about factors, multiples, prime and composite numbers. It was a lot to accomplish, but we seem to have it. I used a number of different things to keep the kiddos engaged.

Skittles-To introduce my students to factors I gave each student a bag of 30 skittles. I asked the students to make an array using 12 of the skittles in their bag. I then had them share the way they built their array. That let us talk about factors, and helped us to identify all of the factors. The students were very happy to eat the skittles at the end of math.

Children's Literature-When I was introducing Prime/composite numbers we read the story You Can Count on Monsters. I've blogged about this book before. You can read more about it here. This book really helps to give a visual. The students love all the monster books I've been sharing with them lately.

QR Code Task Cards-My students love anything that has to do with the ipad. I purchased a great set of QR Code Task cards from Kristin Kennedy. If you haven't used her stuff-I really encourage you to use it. She is fantastic. Here is one of her freebie's that I used this week to help my kiddos sort and identify prime and composite numbers.

What do you do to keep your kiddos engaged, and help them learn tricky math concepts?