Fact Families and Roxaboxen

Click here to Read Roxaboxen

One of my favourite stories is Roxaboxen, by Barbara Cooney.  

It is about a group of children who play pretend and use all of the 

things in their environment to add to their play.  

A few days after reading the story, we were learning about fact families.  

Once you know one fact...you really know 4.

We decided to take our math outside and build fact family houses, using things

from nature to add to our learning...just like in the story.

'I'm just building a part of the house...'

'Let's use shells...'

'we can add jewels...'

'we need rocks and boxes...just like in the story...'

'let's draw it first then decorate it...'

'we used 3, 6, and 9...'

'You do the adding ones and I'll do the subtracting ones...'

'Can we use a box...just like in Roxaboxen?'

'we used 2, 4, 6 and the wind keeps blowing our stuff!!!'

'we have 4, 5, and 9...'

Great way to practice our math and enjoy the beautiful fall weather!

Math Centers

To practice skills learned during this math unit, the students 

participated in 4 math centers.

1.  Stringing Beads on a Pipe Cleaner
2.  Sorting Pasta into a Venn Diagram
3.  Stamp a Pattern
4.  Growth Patterns

During the Beading Center, the students were asked to make a pattern 

and identify the two attributes that change.

At the Pasta Sorting Center, the students found ways to organize

the different shaped noodles into a Venn Diagram.

Stamping a Pattern was one of their favourites.  They had access

to all of my stamps and two colours of ink.  They were able to 

create patterns, identify the attributes that changed, and just keep

going!!

At the Growth Patterns, they created all sorts of patterns that showed 

growing and shrinking.  If they were uncertain, there were cards 

to use to model different patterns.

I would have to say that the Beads were everyone's favourite, as they got 

to bring home their math masterpiece!!

It's amazing to see how focused students can be when they enjoy

what they are doing.  One of the many benefits of doing centers

like these is that everyone can work at their own level

and be successful.  There are so many ways to reach each student 

where they are at and watch them learn new things!!

What do we do when the gym is being used during gym time?

What do we do when we get to the gym and something unexpected

 is going on in the gym?  Well...we have our own fun in the classroom. 

 Take a look at one of our new favourites...Plank Hockey!!

Use a crumpled piece of paper found in the recycle bin as the puck 

and your two arms as the net, and have fun (and workout your core at the same time)!