math tools

A math specialist once told me that it's a sad day in the classroom if no one has counted. I always try to find opportunities for children to count; counting the shapes used in a structure, comparing amounts, adding on to a pile of materials or taking away. We often count before a transition, using our math hands to keep our counting organized and show each number. At any given time you may walk into our classroom and hear, I wonder how many...

This week we have continued to "build" our collection of math tools to use for math workshop. The children worked with geo boards, unifix cubes, and polydrons. I observed as some children explored patterns with their unifix cubes and others used the cubes to measure.

Look! It's as long as our table.

I wonder how long your table is?

I don't know. Probably 100.

You think 100? How could you find out for sure?

We could count the cubes! 

Geo boards provided further opportunities to explore lines and shapes. While children told stories about the rubber bands stretched in different ways across their boards, I checked in and encouraged the young mathematicians to count the squares in their "house" or triangles in their "rocket ship".

 

 

 

James excitedly pointed to the squares in his house. I asked how many he needed to build his house and he quickly counted 10. I offered him a sticky note to record his findings and he eagerly accepted, writing his name and drawing a small square with the number 10. His house has 10 squares. He shared his shape design and his sticky note with his peers on the rug. 

Children are inspired by their peers. It is through the share that I can encourage other children to count how many and record their findings on a sticky note or draw a picture of a structure and label the important parts. Counting, recording, and labeling are all things writers, mathematicians, and scientists do!

 

 

Polydrons are flat (2D) shapes that connect together to build solid (3D) shapes. All of the children were engaged in our exploration of polydrons, many counting how many squares it took to build a "box" (cube) or how many triangles it took to build a "star". 

Maeve pointed to the star on her table. I asked her to tell me about it. She said she needed 5 triangles. I asked if she wanted to save her star with a sticky note, she quickly grabbed one, writing 5 triangles. But, how do you write the work triangle? I reminded her about our shape book on the math shelf and she found the word triangle on the page. 

Again, the share following our math workshop was important; you can find math words in the books on our math shelf and add labels to your work! You don't need a teacher to help you write these words, you can find them in our classroom and write them on your own. 

 

 

 

You will continue to see the morning message in our classroom used as an essential teaching tool. It is often full with literacy or math learning, opportunities to think about feelings, and communication about our day. This week we celebrated being in school for 5 days. I invited the children to show 5 - you can show an amount or number in different ways! Some children wrote the digit 5, some drew pictures, some used dots. This sticky note is now the first page in their math journals with the prompt at the top; Can you show 5? 

Following our conversation about the different ways to show 5, I modeled using a five frame - 5 frames and 10 frames are math tools we will use all year long.