Integrate Math and Literacy for a Halloween Costume!
For our fall carnival, we dressed up like a book character. Me being the math coach, I wanted to incorporate literacy AND math. I decided to become “The Greedy Triangle.” The librarian says that kids LOVE this book.
I looked everywhere for cardboard large enough to make a human sized triangle and finally found some in the storage room–chart paper boxes. The bottom of the triangle is as large as the box. Unfortunately, I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to be equilateral like the true Greedy Triangle. I’m isosceles, but that leads to some great geometry discussion with kids!
I covered my front and back triangle with yellow bulletin board paper. Then I made the mouth eyes and nose with white and colored paper, and just glued it onto my front triangle. I just drew the eyes and nose and mouth free handed, and outlined them with marker. I folded the eyes in half so I would have a symmetrical shape. The cheek circles I made by tracing a round cup. A teacher next door helped me staple the yellow ribbon, which I had at home, to the two triangles. The costume fits over my head like a sundress. Underneath as you can see I wore black tights a black cotton T-shirt and skirt which I already had. I would say this whole project took me one hour and cost me nothing–not bad.
The costume isn’t user friendly however if you plan to sit a lot. The cardboard doesn’t bend of course. When going in and out of small areas I found that my vertices would bump into a lot of things. However, this was a plus because I was able to use math vocabulary all day such as….”watch out for my vertices.” 🙂
I received lots of complements on this costume…some “aww how cute” from parents, kids, and teachers. One parent thought I was pizza…but then where are my pepperonis? I guess I could be a happy block of cheese, too! 🙂
With that said, I suppose you could adapt this costume to many things when trick or treating…
Picture this…
“Trick or Treat”
“Hi, honey, what are you dressed up as?”
“A block of cheese, but I’m lactose intolerant.”
“Oh, honey, here’s some extra candy!” 🙂
What Will You Do for Family Math Night?
After previously being at a PTA meeting, one of our parents voiced her opinion that many times students brought home homework with which parents weren’t able to help them because they were unfamiliar with the content. Since our parents have been in school themselves, many math strategies and methods are available to teach students–to mention a few–ten frames, ladder division, open number lines, compensation, bring it down addition, window method for multiplication. Because of this we set up five stations for our parents in addition to the stations for our students. We really wanted to reach our parents because isn’t that what Family Math Night is all about?
We had six parent stations to teach parents what their children were learning at school–ten frames, addition strategies, subtraction strategies, multiplication strategies, division strategies, and technology. The technology station gained much traffic due to its popularity. We had a lap top d and an Ipad displaying websites and apps that parents could use at home to teach their children. Many times when parents are sitting with their children in any waiting room, they hand their children cell phones to occupy them. To capitalize on this, why not show them educational ways to occupy their children’s time?
For our students teachers developed all types of math stations. We had three K-2 tables, three 3-5 stations, an estimation station, a technology station, and a music and math station. The K-2 tables included dominoes and equations, ten frame games, and legos with number bonds. The 3-5 tables included combinations with outfits, clock fractions, and measurement with paper airplanes. Our technology booth for students was also a big success as students explored different math websites on laptops.
To encourage parent attendance, we served dinner, had door prizes, and announced our 100th Day of School dress up winners. We hope for even more attendance next year. Pictured below are some of the stations and activities.
Clock Fractions
Cutting Clock Fractions...Notice the 100 Silly Bands
Estimation Station...The closest guesser wins the jar.
Estimation Station
Equations with Dominoes
Addition/Subtraction Tic Tac Toe and Take Home Base Ten Block Baggies
The addition/subtraction tic-tac-toe boards and take home base ten blocks shown above are present at a parent table. We have an over abundance of base ten blocks at school. We have about 10 LARGE plastic containers of them that are not used in addition to the ones in teachers’ classrooms. Since we have so many, we decided to send some home with parents.
Legos with Number Bonds
100th Day Dress Up
Ten Frame Station For Parents
Multiplication Booth
Technology Station
Math Websites Station
100th Day Dress Up
On the Hundredth Day of School, we decided as a staff to all dress up with 100 objects on our clothing. I managed to get some photos of the most imaginative outfits. Sorry some of the pictures I took without realizing I didn’t have on my flash. We had a contest among the staff and then we had additional contests for the K-2 students and for the 3-5 students. I nominated a committee to judge the contests. We announced the winners of the dress up that evening at the Family Math Night.
Accessories with 100 coins
How Creative!
100 barrets on a necklace
My T-shirt with 100 google eyes
Banana tree hat
Banana tree with 100 bananas and a monkey on top
100 bracelets
100th Day of School Dress Up Letter
Here is our hundredth day of school dress up letter that we sent home to parents to let them know about our festivities. I am posting it here 100thDayofSchoolDressUp in Word format, so you can easily adapt the wording to fit your needs. I am going to adapt Mrs. Saoud’s rubric from Primary Graffiti for the judging of the dress up contest. We will reveal the winners of the contest at our Family Math night tomorrow evening to encourage parent and student attendance. I will be posting pictures of this soon.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and since it is Christmas, I will share an excerpt from my favorite Christmas book. I have made it somewhat of my own personal tradition to read this story every year at Christmas time to anyone who will listen, and I especially love to read the story to children!
“And I thought about the Angel of the Lord–Gladys, with her skinny legs and her dirty sneakers sticking out from under her robe, yelling at all of us, everywhere: ” Hey! Unto you a child is born!” –The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
I hope you will enjoy this story, too!
How Can You Use Your Spare String of Christmas Lights?
You can easily find a string of Christmas lights at this time of year. One year my mentor gave me the idea to put a string of lights around a bulletin board with this clever title: See Your Name in Lights. Post any type of student work and ta-da…a stellar bulletin board. The great thing about this title is that you can leave the bulletin board up after Christmas since it doesn’t actually refer to the season or to a holiday. It always makes me sad to put so much work into a bulletin board for Christmas, and then the holiday is over since we are only in school about two weeks out of December. At this particular school we didn’t have any actual bulletin boards, so this isn’t as artsy as one I have made in the past. We had to staple/push pin things into the drywall (shhh don’t tell), and the drywall doesn’t hold much. For example, you could staple little sunglasses into the wall to resemble Hollywood stars and use metallic silver border to make the lights reflect like a real sign.
Edible and VERY Cute Indian Village
Well, I have just dirtied up just about every dish in the kitchen and had fun doing so…thanks to an image I saw on pinterest! I found this recipe at Christie’s blog for making teepee cone cupcakes, and decided to try it. I am bringing it over to my friend’s dinner tomorrow. I am hoping the kids will love them. I didn’t do this for anything school related, however, if you are studying Indians and pilgrims, you could have the cupcake cones ready made for the students to decorate. The only things I did differently than the recipe at Christie’s blog is I used a large foil roaster pan instead, and I iced the bottom of the cones in addition to using the chocolate. I couldn’t find leaf sprinkles at Wal-mart or Hobby Lobby, so I sifted through some colored ones I had and took out the pink and blue (I know ridiculous!). Sadly, the stocker at Wal-mart told me that they had replaced the leaf sprinkles with Christmas sprinkles–and to think Thanksgiving isn’t even officially here!
Another Festive Winter Christmas Door!
My colleague is still creating envy among the ranks and giving himself more to do. Here is yet another fabulous Christmas or winter door. The paper is a little wrinkly at the top but he still created a very handsome little snowman :). Sorry, I know the picture isn’t the best quality.
Did You Know Peppermint Candies Grow?
This is too cute not to try!!! I learned that peppermints grow from a very talented kindergarten teacher. Every Christmas season, she has her students plant peppermints in a cup of dirt. Students put glitter in the dirt for fertilizer and then just wait. In a few days, a small candy cane has emerged “growing in the cup”. In another few days, a candy cane of larger stature has “grown”. Children are oh so excited that their peppermint grew to such a large stature! Of course behind the scenes, their teacher is placing a small candy cane in the cup when the children have gone for the day, and then replacing the small candy cane with a larger candy cane. This all for the amazement and wonder in children’s eyes that comes from the magic of Christmas.
Try These Compelling Fall Pumpkin Activities…
I so look forward to a crisp fall day after the humid triple digit temperatures we have had in the south. I am already wanting to hang my fall wreath on the door! Maybe it will hasten fall weather. 🙂 With the fall weather I always think of this pumpkin unit I taught with my precious third graders in which the students all did math investigations with pumpkins. The following are pictures of the activities we did with the unit. I also made the lessons available on Teachers Pay Teachers. I added one lesson to it –pumpkin lines– to make it a full week unit. We measured pumpkin’s weight, circumference, height, and counted the seeds (eeew so messy, but fun!) Take a look below.
Body Benchmarks: Inch Thumbs
Pumpkin Height
Doing Pumpkin Calculations from "Pumpkin Patch Math Investigations"
Yuck!
Counting seeds
Making Arrays to Count Pumpkin Seeds
Pumpkin Seed Arrays
Total Counted Seeds from One Pumpkin
