RAFT Hands-On Education

By Ashley Estes, RAFT Fellow   RAFT is one of the best places to find some amazing premade kits and learning tools. These kits are great and can be used across many grade levels. As a 1 st grade teacher, I use them weekly in my classroom. In this article, I would love to explain one kit in particular that could be easily used with students from Pre-K to 1 st grade. This fantastic kit is called, Laundry Math. This clever and adorable kit comes with sheets that have clotheslines drawn on them, pictures of shirts and pants, 2 sets of numbers 1-10, and Velcro for the items to stick on. This kit helps with counting, 1-1 correspondence, number identification, problem solving, adding, and subtracting. After laminating and placing the Velcro on the pieces, your students are ready to go. The basic idea of this activity kit is students place pieces of clothing on the clothesline and after counting the items; they place the correct number on the sheet (see pictures below). As...

By Rita Mercado, First Grade Teacher, Serendipity School I have taught first grade for the last 12 years, and it seems like every year I get questions about what we do during our “Choice Time.” The number one thing that my students learn how to do during playtime or choice time is learn how to problem solve. My student’s favorite choice is the blocks. Here you see some children building with blocks, but what else are they doing. They are learning about spatial reasoning, using geometry, comparing heights and inclines, among many other things. Not only are children learning how to share and work together during playtime, but they are becoming the engineers of the future. I often overhear my students discussing how they can change the angle of their ramp to make the cars go faster or how to make their tower taller by building a more stable base. They also like to “shop” around the room to find things to add to their structures. “Let’s use this toilet paper roll to add a tunnel...