Thursday, July 16, 2015

Flip Your Lid

This past Monday I shared this picture on Monday Made It: 

I was asked how I plan to use these. 

I decided to share several ways you can use lids in your classroom. 

First of all, START SAVING LIDS, ALL LIDS, ANY COLOR, SIZE, just save them 

The very first time I wanted lids, I enlisted my entire school. Not kidding. 

The back story is this: 
My middle child was in Kindergarten and struggling to learn his sight words. 
I found this on Pinterest. 

I immediately wanted to write my son's 100 sight words on lids and help him. It was April that year and I needed lids QUICK. He was waaaay behind and needed to learn his words before school ended.  We happened to be giving the STAAR (Texas State testing) near that time and each student received a water bottle each day of testing. I sent an email out and asked the teachers to have their students save the lids. I have an over abundance of lids and until the end of the year, students would being me lids. Even if I didn't want them, I accepted them. Back then, I was a lid snob. I only took white ones with nothing on top so I could write on them. 

It did work. My son learned his sight word list before the end of school. 

Fast forward a little and I have a bunch of lids I just can't throw away. 
So, before I became a TpT seller, I created this: 
It is one of my first products I ever posted as well. and I seriously need to update it. 
I will add that to my "to do" list. 

My original post explains the same thing, almost exactly 3 years ago! 

So, a few weeks later, I received an email from another middle school math teacher/TpTer. She was (and still is) a HUGE seller. Jennifer, from 4mula Fun, saw my post and made it way better! She has since become my mentor and friend whom I absolutely adore! 

I wasn't even a seller at this time. I loved what she did and that she shared it with me. 

Now, I am moving to 3rd grade and I want to use lids again. And now, I am not such a snob. I look for all kinds of lids, sizes, colors, etc... 

I plan to have my students create equations with those lids pictures above. I can just have them create what they want or I can assign it. I see this in small group first, then put into a math station. 

I also recently create these games for finding the unknown in equations and think these will be great to use as well. Students can put the lids "in the box" 

I think the possibilities are endless for using lids. 

Patterns, number order, place value, greater than less than, order of operations... 

Reading words, sorting types of words (verbs, nouns, etc), making words, creating sentences, etc... 

My husband recently collected lids for something with his baseball team. They have ended up back at our house and now I have tons. Some of them have writing on the top though. 

So, I bought some stickers to cover it up and I can write on them now. I am telling, you the uses for these are ENDLESS! 

Plus, so what if a lid get lost? You can replace it since they are so accessible!!! 


Then I searched "bottle lids" on Pinterest and found a gazillion (okay, maybe not that many) ways people used them! 






Seriously, lids are great resource for you to have in your classroom. I used the fractions, decimals and percents with my 6th graders, it's not just for elementary kids! 

I would love to hear how you use lids or ideas you come up. Please leave a comment below. 

Be creative, open the lid, and think outside the box! 

Happy collecting! 






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