Holidays, holidays! Students made preserved lemon or fire cider tonic to bring home to their families for the winter holidays. I taught the class how to create a six pointed star out of paper and then cut into it to create beautiful snowflakes. In honour of Chinese New Year, students helped to make vegetarian pot stickers for the whole school. On the 100th day of school, students chose from a wide variety of activities that included counting how may jumping jacks they could do in 100 seconds, or drawing a self portrait of themselves at 100 years of age, or solving arithmetic problems based on 100. Each student brought in a unique hundreds project and I loved seeing the variety and ingenuity.

We have done many math activities that centered around our understanding of money and its value. I read three books which prompted much discussion and learning: Alexander Who Used To Be Rich Last Sunday, A Quarter From The Tooth Fairy, and How To Turn Lemons Into Money. We examined pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters and described their similarities and differences. We also played games and completed activities based on the value of the coins. We spoke a little of the history of money and coins and second grade students played The Money Exchange Game using play $1, $10, $100 bills. Students picked pennies and the class graphed the pennies according to the date they were created. We extended this activity by also graphing our birthdates along a timeline.

I read a book entitled Grandfather Tang’s Story, about fox fairies and told using tangrams for some of the animals. Each students cut a square into the 7 tan shapes and brought it home in an envelope (I hope). They then had time to create their own animals or other shapes using the 7 tans and they have been tracing their tangram puzzle and titling it, so that I can laminate it, and they can either bring it home or leave it in the math cabin for students to solve.

Throughout, students have continued to perform their weekly jobs, solve task cards, fill out their number scrolls, and participated in our sharing circles. We discussed mistakes and how they are opportunities for learning and I read some stories from the book ‘Mistakes That Worked’.

Recently, 1st grade students have been working on addition by playing domino addition and discussing doubles facts, and 2nd grade students have been discussing easy addition facts, plus 0, plus 1, doubles, and the plus 9 shortcut.

Math

Math

Math, 11/30