Math

December was brief and was affected by pullouts for play rehearsal, so curriculum had to be flexible and accommodate the absence of students.  During this time, students worked independently on task cards (multiplication, pattern block puzzles, time) and This is Not a Maths books (geometry and art).  Whole group, we did a graphing activity, created snowflakes, and played Digits in Place.  Students made cookie dough and rolled and cut out cookies.  Previous to this, I told them the yield for the three recipes all the classes had created, gave them the numbers for how many students were in each class, and then asked them to determine the total number of cookies we would bake, the total number of students at school from kinder through sixth, and how to share out the cookies equally.  Students used various strategies for solving this problem including using snap blocks to represent the cookies, adding on whiteboards, mental math, or pencil and paper tally marks.

In the end, our cookie yield was actually much greater since our cookie cutters were smaller than those specified in the recipes and students were able to have more than they had determined.  

Another math activity they performed in partnerships was one of our Beanstix Algebra problems from Creative Math Solutions (Marcy Cook).  Students love this activity where they get to practice beginning algebra in a hands on way.  View the video below.

As part of the holiday theme, I told students the Christmas story and Katy recounted the Hanukkah story.  Students played dreidel with peanuts and graphed their outcomes as a probability exercise.  Afterwards students got to keep ten peanuts each and Jack asked his group to classify their peanuts by size in order to ensure equality.