Drum roll! I am super impressed with Tabitha of Totally Sweet Math Centers. She is one of a 5 member team on the blog, The Learning Highway. It’s full of variety and is honest and fresh.
Tabitha has also guest blogged, check out her post on the Primary Gal’s blog. She gives very practical information. But I first noticed Tabitha for all of her awesome math activities for math centers, she has 272 products in her TPT store, that’s amazing.
I was always curious about her Varoom the Room math center, a life-sized math game board. So I got a chance to try it out in my class! Full disclosure – we only got to play it once, using the short version, which is a great option in this product. I also wanted to try it out first, before I fully laminated it. Lamination is precious to me #superexpensive, so I like to try out things first to make sure they are “Lamination Worthy.”
Tabitha provides a life-sized game board, so make sure you have enough time to print it all out and get it organized. It’s not a print and use within minutes activity. I inserted the game squares into plastic sleeves, and rather than having my kids step on them, I stuck them into the edge of a carpet and they walked around the perimeter. Tabitha provides a black and white as well as a full color version.
Kids move around the game board by answering questions. In this set, there are four different categories: multiplication/division, elapsed time, fractions, and area/perimeter. Super fun for my kids and great for an end of year activity, when you can be more tolerant of the heightened excitement. The kids determine whether the answers are correct or not, so it makes kids defend their thinking. Tabitha provides cute game piece headbands so kids are right in the game. Since I am such a laminating protector (I don’t want the kids to step on my lamination), I am going to make life size game pieces, like from colored paper bags filled and then tied w/ ribbon on the top, since I will be laminating this activity – it passed my Lamination Worthy test!
