Kim Sutton Math!

Last Friday I left my kids in the capable hands of a TOC and went to see the always wonderful Kim Sutton. I was able to attend the workshop with my mom which made it even more fun! We arrived just on time (traffic) and had a great day of hands on learning!  One of the best things about the workshop is all the fun dice you play with! definitely know how kids feel about playing with dice when you see the fun colours!

The location was great, and there were a lot of people there. Here are some more shots of the day.

 all ready to go!

So of course this week we have been putting the things I learned into practice. 

We made counting strings on Tuesday:  They string 20-30 beads onto a string and then the beads can move along the string. It can be used for addition, subtraction and multiplication/skip counting.  It is also great for kids who need to fiddle with things. 

On Wednesday we played a few games with digit cards, and it was interesting to see who had number sense and who took a while to catch on to where the digits should be. The first game we played was with the random number CD that says the numbers 0-9 in a random order and they had to flip the cards over and back every time they heard it. When it was face down some forgot where the number was! Then we went over which digits were face up and which were face down. 

On Thursday we started with the flip over game and then added a twist where they had to flip over two digits that equalled the number called, so if the number called was 8 then they could flip over 2 and 6 or 5 and 3 or 1 and 7 etc. If they ran out of addends, then they had a rest time. You can play this game with partners and a double die (which we will do next week) and then if they run out of cards to flip over, they have to flip them all over. The winner is the one who can flip all their digit cards face down exactly. You can also add in that they can subtract or add the numbers together to get the number rolled.  The digit mats that they are playing on have dots and on the other side coins. When I had them put their digit cards down at first some were confused as the 5 spot only had one coin in it, but the coin was a nickel so we had a good discussion about why the 5 card would go there. 

The other game we played was with the hundreds chart and bingo chips. To start the random number CD that calls numbers 0-100 called numbers and they put the chips on that number. It was interesting to see who had a good number sense and who had trouble locating the number (a good reminder to me that we need to do this more often!!) Then they had to get 4 numbers in a row. After the random number CD (which one student figured out everyone would get a four in a row at the same time if they are listening) they rolled a double decagon die (10 sided, I am trying to use more math language) and covered that number( the outside number was the tens place and the inside die was the units place). When they got 4 in a row, they wrote down a tally mark and once they got 10 tally marks they won. Now we don't have 100 bingo chips each so the kicker was that once they ran out of chips, they could start moving the ones on the board to another location if they felt it would benefit their game. This was a hard concept for them to contend with. 

Math!!

We have been finishing up our unit on number sense and as one culminating activity I read the story, "One Is a Snail, Ten Is a Crab" by April Pulley Sayre. It's a really cute counting book with a fun twist.

Amazon.ca

After reading the book I gave the students a number between 20 and 100. I also gave them pictures of the different feet in the story that I found online here. They then had to create a picture showing that number in feet. For example if their number was 29 they could use two crabs, one insect, two feet, and a snail.

 We have also been working on doubles and I found a great doubles craftivity on pinterest, which led to a great blog by Amy Lemons The students created a Doubles Dude and then wrote out the doubles facts. They are quite cute!

It's been a fun Math week. Maybe too much fun???? 

Place Value and DOT DAY!!

So, lesson learned again! Never introduce a new toy without giving kids a chance to play with it. We tried to focus on place value, but the rods were too good as drumsticks, and the hundreds were very useful to build towers so after a few minutes of trying, I gave in and let them build. They were very good construction workers! Not so great mathematicians during this lesson! HAHA. 

 We also celebrated International Dot day in honour of book ``The Dot`` by Peter H. Reynolds. Students were given a construction paper circle and instructed to turn that circle into something of their choosing. We came up with flowers, bugs, cats, frogs, swords, tacos, a tiger and many other creations. We didn`t get finished, so the completed projects will be up in a future post. For now, here are the beginnings.

First week

Man the days are flying by....we are almost at the end of the second week! We have done a lot of fun things, and I am really enjoying my class. We are still working on transitions, but that will take some time...haha.
Some of our first week highlights include: All about me pennants, sunflower glyphs, favourite words lesson, and introducing the "dice game".

Colouring their "pick-a-stick" people

All about me pennants: 

favourite animal is a goat???

Sunflower glyphs:

Art folders:

Dice game! Never had them all engaged at once! best and easiest math game ever! All you need are two dice, or even more exciting, DOUBLE DICE and a simple bar graph! Students roll the dice (or die) and add the two numbers together. Then they record the sum on the bar graph by colouring the corresponding square. The goal is to see which sum wins! All you hear as they play is, "7 is winning!" :5 is winning!" etc!

New Year

Summer sure flew by... but it always does! Now it's Friday of teacher week and I think I am ready for Tuesday. Here are some pics of the class..

and some of the little details....

now the deep breath before the plunge!

YAY!

Symmetry!

We had some fun with symmetry this week, and the kids are really understanding the concept. As a side note, I have to say that I love May and June because all the work we have done up to now is really paying off and they are becoming so independent and hard working (more often than before!)

SO back to symmetry. We talked about lines of symmetry and how some figures only have one while others have two or more. We discovered this while working with rulers and pattern blocks. First students built a symmetrical design on both sides of the rulers then they built a design on one side and their partner had to build the design on the other side making sure it was symmetrical.

Then I broke out the construction paper and had them make symmetrical insects. We folded our base paper (the black construction paper) in half and they cut out shapes to build their bug. They really enjoyed this activity and their creations are pretty imaginative. Some of them said  "I'm glad these are not real, they'd be HUGE!"

Only 5 weeks left! THIS YEAR HAS FLOWN!!!