Mental Gymnastics...whew!

When I woke up this morning, my first thought was, "I'm done!"
I've spent most of the summer working on a book of daily math problems for my math classes, and I finally finished (this morning at 2 a.m.....I wasn't going to bed until I was done). I've been working on it almost nonstop for the past week because I just wanted to get it DONE.  I feel so free today!

Mental Gymnastics is the name I use for our warm ups/daily math/problem of the day. A few years ago, I decided that I needed a different name for warm ups and thought Mental Gymnastics was appropriate. I usually call it MG for short.

I decided to make my own book, because I just haven't found a resource that I really like. For a few years, I used the Daily Math Review by Evan Moor, but that goes by week (Week 1 Mon, Tues, Wed....Week 2, Mon, Tues Wed). If we skipped a day, we were on the "wrong" day of the week. So, I made my MG go by numbers, 1-180. I also included fewer problems each day (2 or 3) because I don't want the MG to take TOO long (my math classes are only 42 min).

Last year, I simply used problems that I created each day, and I posted them on the Smartboard. This got me thinking that I should just write my own book and have it ready for the new school year. So I did!

Click to see on TPT

I included "tip" boxes and "reminder" boxes to help the kids out. With the Daily Math Review, if kids didn't know how to do a problem, they were stuck. I'm hoping the tip boxes will help them to get on the right track.

I am excited about my answer key...I included the questions in the answer key so I don't have to flip between question page and answer page (that annoys me). I also included the work for the problems so I don't have to worry about doing it later!
 
I plan to copy the book for each student, but I'm not sure if I want the kids to keep them in binders or keep them filed in the classroom.....need to think about that.

Now that I have finished this book, I can focus on finishing those math books I started reading, plan for interactive notebooks, work on some smaller lesson plans, create some new posters for my room, and work on redesigning my blog.

Is that too much to get done in the last 3 weeks of summer?
Hope not!