5 Little Speckled Frogs Composing/Decomposing Number Lesson

Hi friends! Have you noticed that I'm going longer in between posts lately? Sorry.....but I am swamped this year and October is such a busy month! Is anyone else already looking forward to Christmas break?  

I did want to give you a peek into a FAB lesson I did that my kids loved - SCORE!!

So, we were working on composing the number 5...
I found this adorable video for the song 5 Little Speckled Frogs on youtube:



How stinkin' adorable is that??? Well, not only is it a super fun song to sing and act out - it's totally FABULOUS for teaching composing number 5. Don't cha just love it when you can teach with a song? I know I do!

So, of course I introduced this song the day before we started our lesson. I wanted to make the kiddos knew the song well so we could sing it but still concentrate on our learning. I even came up with hand motions to go along with the song and that really "hooked" the kids.

I happened to have the Frogs on a Log Counting Kit from Lakeshore Learning, so we were ready to work with some numbers! :0)



Each child got 5 frogs (we counted several times to make sure that it was 5 no matter how many times we counted -- 5 is 5 is 5)....

Then, we started singing the song.....
5 little speckled frogs, sitting on a speckled log - eating the most delicious bugs -- YUM, YUM! 1 jumped in the pool where it was nice and cool! Now there are 4 speckled frogs -- Glub, Glub!

As we sang the song, the kids would act out the song -- by helping the frogs "jump" into the pool. When each frog jumped in we would stop and say, " 4 frogs on the log and 1 in the pool makes 5, 3 frogs on the log and 2 in the pool makes 5"........ as we continued on they really started noticing that no matter how we separated the frog, there would still be 5........

The kids love doing this and asked me repeatedly, "Can we do the speckled frog song?" So, of course, we sang the song dozens of times this week :0) I love when a song really hooks the kids!

Now, this activity is in our math tubs, but it would also work really well in a retelling center too!

A few other books/songs that are great at teaching young children how to compose/decompose numbers is:



In fact, any 5 Little Monkeys books work great and I also love using Halloween-ish poems like 5 Little Pumpkins, Bats, etc........sooooo fun!!

Question: Do you have any books that you just LOVE using for composing/decomposing books??? Tell us about it below :0)

Oh, and on a sadder note: We were informed that our district (which had been a long time proponent of "traditional home and blocks centers" ) is no longer allowing them in the classroom :0( So, here is a picture of my sad little home center in the hallway.......Rest in Peace.......Why do we feel a need to push children out of childhood????? Anyways......makes me sad :0(