Welcome Back! Minute-To-Win It Competition

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We returned to school today after having a week off for Spring Break.  I decided that this would be a great day to celebrate the classroom that had achieved the most lessons passed on Think Through Math over the last three weeks.  I am pretty sure my homeroom (the winners) were pleased with their math class today!

You can search the web (specifically Pinterest) to find all kids of Minute to Win It ideas.  The two sites that I used to help me set up my games were:  

     

• http://teachmama.com/minute-win-games-kids-family/ 
• http://www.happinessishomemade.net/awesome-minute-to-win-it-birthday-party-games/ 

  

To set up your classroom for a Minute to Win It competition, 

1) I placed 19 colored chips (9 blue, 10 yellow) in a container and asked my students to pull 1.  This is how I broke my class into two groups, fairly.

2) I had two bowls of numbered tiles (1-9 and 0-9).  I had each student in each group pull a tile to determine which students would place each game (also numbered 1-10).

3) I had already set up the 10 games using the websites named above, as well as a Google Slides presentation to help me with rules and visuals on how each game was to be played.

We had reached the point where I had one extra student and one game to play, but no opponent.  To solve this problem, I had the group with one less student draw numbers again, this time, the one who pulled a "0" was the final opponent.

The team that "won" received a full sized candy bar, the consolation prize was miniature candy bars.  All in all, no one felt like they had lost!  They all enjoyed the games, they all enjoyed the competition (which we kept friendly), and they all agreed that this was a great way to begin the final 9 weeks of school!