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!!!