Domino Fun

 We will be using dominoes to help us focus on our math facts for the next few weeks.  We learned the traditional Dominoes game.

We are also learning how to be good sports.

Good game!

Estimating & Measuring

During Math Workshop, we have been working on measuring with nonstandard objects.  

We measured length with objects like popsicle sticks...

...and we measured the weight of our owl pellets with objects like cubes...

...and now we are even coming up with things to measure on our own!

Before we measure, we always try to estimate!

This week we read the book How Big is a Foot? by Rolf Myller.  The story was about a King who has a special bed made for his Queen's birthday.  The King measured out how tall and wide he needed the bed by using his feet.  By the time the carpenter's tiny apprentice made the bed, measuring with his tiny feet, the bed did not fit the Queen!

We found out how many teacher steps it took to measure a jumprope:

We had a few students estimate and measure the jumprope with their feet, and then we all made estimates for how many of our footsteps it would take to measure the jumprope.

Finally, we checked our estimates by actually measuring the jumprope with our footsteps.

When we had trouble balancing, we always had a friend nearby to help!

We had some great and reasonable estimates!

Popsicle Stick Measurement

 In Math Workshop we are learning about nonstandard measurement and using popsicle sticks to measure length.  We learned that when we measure, the units we measure with shouldn't have any gaps and they should be as straight as possible.  Mathematicians are very careful and double-check their work to make sure it's accurate.

Part of the Common Core Standards for math engages kids with measurement by using nonstandard units to understand that length means a number of smaller same-size units laid end-to-end with no gaps or overlaps.  This will help us understand measurement more deeply later when we use the standard measurements of inches and centimeters on a ruler.

Here we are working with our partners, measuring like mathematicians!

We record our estimates in our booklets before we measure.

 Then, we compared our estimates with the actual measurements to see if we had a reasonable estimate.

We measured *lots* of things in our classroom with popsicle sticks.  

 We even measured each other!

What could you measure with at home that is a nonstandard unit?

Challenging Our Math Brains

 Sometimes during Number Corner we come up with equations to match how many days we have been in school. This is a great way to challenge every growing math brain, whether our equation for day 16 is 

16 + 0

100-84 or

5+5+5+1

We use our days in school grid to help us create equations.

Look at all our great equations!

Our First Reward

 We earned our first ten frame full of BEAK Awards! (BEAK stands for Be Excellent, Awesome Kids)

Each time we receive a compliment or reach a goal, we can earn a class BEAK Award. We keep track of these awards in a ten frame.

When we have a full ten frame, we can trade that in for a special event for our class.  One day we brainstormed possible rewards. The following day we voted as a class on our morning message. Each student got 3 sticky dots to vote with and use however s/he wanted.

We marked groups of ten as we counted up the votes. 

Pajama Day was definitely the favorite! We quickly earned another ten frame and were able to bring stuffies in a few days later, as well!

Number Racks

 Today for math we made a tool that we will be using all year long: our number racks.

Number racks help us think about numbers in terms of fives and tens so that we can be more efficient mathematicians.

There was a lot of thinking as students in Room 408 made sure their number rack had five red, five white on each string. I also heard a lot of teaching conversations as each child helped another as they double-checked to make sure their racks were accurate.

What great mathematicians!

Popsicle Inquiry

  In math we have been doing a mini-inquiry with twin pops.

Twin pops can help our brains grow!  We made paper twin pops, and created a chart to study counting by 2s, because each twin pop has two sticks. We noticed lots of math patterns.

We added The Popsicle Chant to our Poetry Notebooks.

We also graphed the most popular popsicle flavors.

We even had a popsicle party!

On Monday we will challenge our brains with a popsicle problem.

Yum! What is your favorite popsicle flavor?

Exploration

 At the beginning of the year in first grade, we explore lots of the materials we will be using this year. We came up with lots of cool creations. Here is a video showcasing some of them!

Our First Chapter Book Read Aloud

 During snack time this year we will be enjoying lots of different chapter books as read alouds. 

Today we voted on which chapter book we will read first. After a book talk about each choice, we all got one sticky note to vote for our favorite. 

Here are our results:

We counted the votes, then double-checked the count like mathematicians do...

James & The Giant Peach received the greatest number of votes!

Working our Math Brains

 We have been thinking about numbers a lot in our time together. We work with numbers at our Number Corner, as well as during our Math Workshops.

Since it was our 14th day of school, we focused in on the number 14. We tried to come up with as many different ways to represent 14 as we could.

We came up with lots of different equations, tallies and pictures!

For Math Workshop we learned about part/part/whole mats.

We watched a video from our Math Coach, Mrs. Moeller, about using these mats to help us represent and solve problems in different ways. We paused the video every now and then to solve the problems on our own and then kept watching to check our work.

We have also been sharpening our estimation skills! We saw a picture of a jar with glittery balls in it and made a quick estimate of how many balls we thought were in the jar.

We found out there were 24 balls in the jar.  After talking about reasonable estimates, we made estimates of other similar jars of balls, using what we learned about previous jars each time that we made a new estimate. 

Based on what you learned about the first three jars in the picture above, can you make a reasonable estimate about how many balls are in the jar in the last picture?