These kids have big wish lists!    The kids partnered up and spent a math period going through sales flyers.  Each pair was given a $500 budget. They had to keep track of how much money they “spent” as well as how much their partner was spending. The general consensus at the end of the [...]

Continuing on our mini-exploration of December holidays…..   Today we read a couple of books about Hannukkah, made a paper menorah, and learned to play the dreidel game.  

Yesterday, a third of our class left to go sing at the Retired Teacher’s Luncheon.  While they were gone, the rest of us played Make 11. First, all of the face  cards were set aside, and 28 of the remaining cards were laid out in a pyramid, with each row below partially covering the previous [...]

Today’s math problem:  How many ways can you make $50 using $5 bills, $10 bills, and $20 bills?   After about 20 minutes, the answers were widely varied, and ranged from 4 ways to 15 ways.  We met over at the carpet and discussed how to be absolutely certain that all the ways had been [...]

This one’s tricky. To effectively use guess and check, you need to know the total, and one more clue.  For example, the sum of Beau and Max’s ages is 16 (the total).  Beau is 2 years older than Max (one more clue). Then you have to try different combinations until you find one that fits [...]

The problem:  two frogs are on opposite sides of the pond.  There are 24 lily pads across the surface.  One frog jumps on every second lily pad and one jumps on every third. Which lily pads will they both land on?   Strategy #1: Draw a picture     Strategy #2: Use manipulatives The verdict:  [...]

Here we are again with the rulers!  Today we practiced measuring, dividing, and fractions. Each pair was assigned a fraction to divide their flags into. After that, they colored them and put a label on them naming the fraction.

We learned how to enlarge a picture using a grid.  Along the way, we practiced measuring and using a coordinate grid. First, we drew a grid on a 12×12 piece of paper.  We measured and drew lines every inch. Next came transferring a tiny picture, square by square, onto the grid. Until the picture was [...]

This is a cute story about a couple who decide to have a banquet.  They rent 8 tables to seat 32 people, but when their guests start to arrive, they start putting tables together. We used small tiles to represent the tables and moved them around as the characters did.  Each time there was a [...]

Welcome back to school! We jumped right back into things with some work with transformations today (slides, flips, and turns). Slides are the easiest.  When slid, the object changes position and will not be connected to its original spot. Turns were a little trickier.  We marked a vertex, and turned our shapes on that spot.  [...]