Key Word Kiddos

I don't think it's any secret that math is my favorite subject to teach. I love coming up with new ideas and lessons to teach something that used to be so boring to me. As a child I pretty much lived on Math Struggle Street from the 5th grade up. So, I've made it a goal of mine to make math as exciting and engaging as possible in my classroom!
Last year I really focused on upping my game when it came to word problems. I noticed that my students would only buy into having fun with word problems if I was a good salesman. I was constantly having to think of new ways to engage my learners when it came to reading and solving those pesky things. We became a "Crew" of problem solvers. We made up silly word problems. We listened to Lion King music while solving safari problems. This summer I've been trying to think of a new way to display and teach important key words. Then, I remembered how much my kids LOVED our Place Value Pals. They really became part of our classroom... and my students laughed about them up until the last day of school. I knew I needed to use that idea with key words!
That's where Key Word Kiddos came to life! The great thing about these guys is I can display them in my classroom and then introduce each character one at a time. They won't really have a lot of meaning to my kids until I make a HUGE deal out of our new friends throughout our lessons. We will start off with Addition Addison in the first few weeks of school... then we will move to Subtraction Sullivan... and much later in the year we will meet Division Dianna and Multiplication Murphy!
I made this to where each Key Word Kiddo could be made into a boy or girl. You can choose your skin and hair color. AND, you can choose from a variety of eyes and hair styles! You can really make these look like a fun bunch of kiddos using the templates that I included!

Now, I want to break down each kiddo and show you some of my favorite activities that I do during each of my math focus units. The images below are all clickable... so you can click on each picture inside of the image and it will take you to the unit, blog post, or freebie where you can locate more information!
Addition Addison will kickstart our Addition Strategies unit (probably the 2nd week of school). As we are solving problems we will also be learning our doubles, fact families, related facts, etc!

Sometimes it can be hard to switch our brains from adding, adding, adding to now taking away rather than joining together. Subtraction Sullivan (or Susanna if you make a girl!) will be constantly reminding us that we need to look closely at what our problems are asking!

We won't get to multiplication until the 2nd semester, but it never fails that my students start asking me about it early on in the school year. They know that BIG kids learn how to multiply, so they are always interested! Multiplication is one of my favorite concepts to teach because everything we do is so hands-on and fun! Multiplication Murphy will definitely add some spice to our learning!

We start division at the very end of the year...like when we have ZERO energy left to exert. But, we do encounter a lot of real-life situations where items need to be shared and people want equal amounts. I mean, if life isn't fair... well we'll all just cry and tattle, right??!! Well, Division Dianna (or Dillon) will sure motivate us to keep on learning up until the VERY END of the school year! We won't have time to get lazy because we will have one more Key Word Kiddo to meet!

I made these with the intention of ME making them and displaying in my classroom. BBBBUUUUTTT, they are definitely something that your kiddos could make as well! Plus, the face templates could be used for several projects throughout the year! I hope you enjoy these Key Word Kiddos as much as I do!!! Don't forget... all of those images above are clickable! You'll find some freebies buried inside :)))