Gone Fishin'

In S'math we are doing an activity from AIMS Education Foundation (Activities Integrating Math & Science) that helps show the effects of camouflage. Half the students have done the activity and the other half will do it next week.

Students "fish" for paper fish that are spread out on a construction paper ocean. There are equal numbers of four colors of fish: red, white, blue (the same color as the "ocean"), and black. Teams of students take turns fishing and record their results. Then the whole group meets together to share the class results. We put them on a big chart on the chalkboard so that we can easily compare the number of fish caught. Inevitably either the red or white fish are caught the most. Usually the blue is caught the least, though a few times black has come in last in number caught. I don't tell the students ahead of time that this is a camouflage activity. It prompts some "aha" moments as the students consider why we get the results we do.

I have learned to trust the activity and not get worried if one team's results are skewed because black or blue is a favorite color of some of the fishers. Though I tell the kids not to try to pick up certain colors, a few will do that. Fortunately the rest of the group balances them out. (Or maybe it's the kids who like white and red best!)

World Math Day

Wednesday, March 4, was World Math Day. Although we did not participate in any of the online competitions associated with Math Day, we found a fun way to celebrate the day. Lower School head teacher, Lisa, came to Sky Class and taught the students a math game based on some traditional Native American math games. After playing the game with a partner, students got to take the materials home so that they could play the game some more.

100 Equations

On our 100th day we began a chart to see if the class could come up with 100 equations that equal 100. There was a lot of initial effort and now it has ebbed somewhat. But slowly we are creeping up to 100. As of now we have 98, so just 2 more to go! We've got an interesting combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division equations and some combos. It has been fun watching the kids work out equations. Some just think of one and then look to see if it's on the chart already. Others will take an equation already on the chart and vary it a little.

100th Day!

Monday was our 100th day of school. We had a fun morning doing a variety of activities centered on the number 100. The kids always love making 100 day Trail Mix. They get to choose 10 different items (from a selection of dried fruit, bite-sized cereal and crackers, seeds, & chocolate chips) and get 10 of each item. They line their choices up on a hundreds chart then slip it into a bag to munch on. Another favorite is the 100 pig hunt. While one teacher reads Pigs in Hiding, the others hide 100 numbered paper pigs around the main part of the classroom. Excitement ensues as the children try to find all the pigs. As they are found, their numbers are turned around on a hundreds pocket chart. We are now down to about 8 unfound pigs. Some years the last ones don't turn up until end of year cleanup!

Every student had a collection of 100 items to put on display. They all arranged their collections along with a written description. River Class came to visit, and we had a chance to view our classmates collections. It was a wide variety that included collections of shells, rocks, Hershey's kisses, drawings of flowers, pictures created in Photoshop, legos, coins, etc. Students did 100 foot relays, played games with a hundreds chart, colored 100 hearts and 100 stars, worked to write 100 words, and strung necklaces of 100 beads. We are still working on filling a chart with 100 equations that equal 100.

Pictures: Upper left: making 100 item trail mix Upper right: game with the 100 chart
Lower left: a building for 100 frog counters

"But it doesn't come out even!"

This is another journal problem that can puzzle the kids because it doesn't come out even. Today I asked my students to consider this problem:
You invite 10 friends over for a party. You want to serve juice. You want enough for each person to have 1 cup. The extra special juice you want to buy (raspberry razzle-dazzle kiwi!) only comes in quarts. (At this point I asked the students to remember how many cups are in a quart and one of the students supplied 4.) How many quarts do you need to buy? Prove your answer.

Quite a few asked for help. For each I asked leading questions until they came up with an answer and a way to express their understanding of it. Some included themselves in the planning and some did not. One kept trying to adjust the number of people so that every cup was accounted for: "well my parents could come, or maybe I'll have one go out and one stay." That extra cup tends to bother them a lot and I don't think it is in the name of "waste not want not." For them division should be neat and tidy. We'll share our solutions soon. I hope problems like this help them reach some peace with the idea that math can be messy!

S'marvelous S'math

We include activities in our curriculum that we call S'math because they use science and math together. One source for ideas is AIMS Education Foundation (http://www.aimsedu.org/). AIMS stands for Activities Integrating Math & Science. We also draw on other sources to "cook" up our plans, drawing in any themes we are pursuing as well as student interests.

This year our whole Lower School theme is "Way to Grow." Some of our early S'math activities focused on plants, using our Sky Class garden at times. We are also studying the human body and learning about its systems and parts. One activity focused on the skeleton as we explored bones and joints. More recently we did an activity (drawn from Marilyn Burns) in which students were asked to estimate how many times a strings equal to their heights would go around their heads at the forehead. We then went on to explore other body ratios (How does your height relate to your wingspan? How does your height relate to the length of your leg?)

Rachel Counts (in more ways than one!)

I am enjoying Winter Break, a chance to catch my breath in the midst of a busy school year. We are in the Smokies with family for the holidays. This has given me lots of good time with granddaughter Rachel, who reports her age as three and three-quarters. Like her father and uncle when they were this age, she delights in patterns and numbers. We count pennies as we play dreidel. We count blocks and toys and the cookies we cut out of the sugar cookie dough. We count cards as we play Concentration (Memory), where she shows a strong visual memory. Her number sense seems to strengthen every day. We were building with her baby sister's blocks one day. We had established the previous day there were ten of the soft rubbery blocks in all. We were trying to recreate a structure we had built the day before, but could not as some were missing. She carefully counted out eight blocks. I asked her how many were missing. She thought for a moment. "Two! " she announced. Later we found one of the missing blocks and added a bear to the structure.