ADDITION! and SUBTRACTION!

This week we continued to formalize our addition and subtraction skills. The children listened to and solved story problems. After a little practice with writing number sentences, we wrote our own book of story problems! The children acted each problem out, directing the cats, dogs, or butterflies to move in a way to join a group or leave a group. We played games that allowed us to take turns, collect 10 or 15 objects together, and feel a little bit of cooperation. We rolled dice, and added or took away "1" from the number rolled.
Until Next Time,
Michele

Measuring, but also Counting, and Combining

We're beginning, now, to combine our math skills. We count, but we also write down a variety of numbers. We count, but then we add another bit and count all together, and write our answer down. The children rolled two dice, combined the numbers or dots, and wrote the number in the correct column. They grabbed a handful of cubes or pom poms, counted, then grabbed another handful and wrote down the "all together" amount. We looked at dots in a ten frame pattern, briefly, and then reproduced it with pennies. While playing the dice game, I heard a kindergartner exclaim,"Hey, we're adding!"
Until Next Time,
Michele

Measure More

This week we practiced our measuring....we measured footprints, how far we could jump, how far buttons could jump, how far crickets had jumped..... and used different units of measure to measure our face, arms, hand span, and feet. The children are learning to record "data" and make comparisons with their data and report their data(notice the clipboards.) We are going to practice graphing, as our STANDING JUMPS were very popular and we have a lot of data!
Until Next Time,
Michele

Measure IT

We began our measuring unit with talk about shoes....how do we know what size we are? We measure. We used "units" of measure, namely interlocking cubes, to measure our own shoes as well as shoe outlines of some mystery guests...AND we made flip flops from the outlines of our shoes! Cardboard, pipe cleaners, and beads, and lots of individual creativity and fun.
Until Next Time,
Michele

A Pattern Museum

We completed our Pattern Unit with a Pattern Museum. The first graders came to view and comment on work that we the children chose to share, and we were very excited and proud to exhibit our work! We learned this week that there are "units" to patterns, and that you can break a pattern into a number of units, or whole parts that repeat.
Until Next Time,
Michele

Patterns and Games

This week we added to our collections of patterns, constructing pattern snakes from pattern blocks and "recording" our patterns with shape cutouts with markers to add details. It was interesting to watch the organizational "patterns" of the children, from the "visualizers" to the "step by step" constructors. We played a game of "what's next" and the children independently paired up to challenge each other with figuring out what comes next given a particular pattern that they constructed. We read books that had patterns to them, and as I left out the words they would fill them in, given the pattern of the previous page. The children constructed their own 1,2 patterns in hopscotch mode, and some added the embellishments of numbers, then demonstrated their pattern. As the year has progressed, I am able to spend just a few minutes demonstrating our open-ended games and activities and the children make their own choices, choose partners, and work cooperatively or independently until discussion time, when we gather to show each other our work. We are going to share our pattern work in a pattern museum, which will take more organizational skills!