A few years ago, I had my students practice area and perimeter using a snowball fight type activity. You can read about that activity here. But, for some reason, even though my students LOVED it, I never repeated the activity. Well, that was until I ran across this post from Teaching Maddeness. In the post, she talked about using snowball fight learning to help her students practice multi-digit addition.
Well, my students were working on double digit multiplication before the Christmas break, and I wanted a fun way to review what we had learned. So, I downloaded her activity, but modified it for my class. Amanda has this freebie available in her store here.
Her set comes with pre-made numbers that you simply print off. Alternatively, you can have your students write the numbers on papers themselves, but I found that her numbers gave a larger variety than what my students might have written on their own. Besides, I think hers are cuter!
All the students had to do was crumple them up and ...
FIRE!
They were quite excited to hear that their teacher was ALLOWING them to throw things in class.
They each had to grab one snowball and return to meet with their partner. They each unwrapped their snowball and multiplied the numbers together. I asked each partner to first solve by themselves, and then check with their partner. If they both had the same answer, they stood up for the next round. If they had different answers, they needed to talk about it and figure out who was correct.
I was able to differentiate for those students who are still struggling, by having them add or subtract.
After the activity, I simply collected the snowballs for the next time!
What other variations of this activity can you think of? Let me know in the comments below.
