Teaching 3 Dimensional Solids?
Check the trash first! Whenever teaching dimensional solids, I look around the school building for large boxes that may be thrown out. Especially in the teacher workroom, there are always bulletin board paper boxes, toner boxes etc. that are being thrown away. This is where I have found some of the best trash for treasure pieces for my 3D solids collection. When I have found one, I wrapped it in colored bulletin board paper with the name on each one to help students have a constant visual of prism pieces. At the time I teach solids, I also have the students bring in items they find at home that may be prisms, cubes, spheres, or other solids. They relish sharing their found items with the class. When they share them with the class, they must ask the students how many faces, edges, and vertices there are. Students get extra credit for bringing in solids. The best solid that I ever had a student bring in was an almost perfect triangular pyramid made out of rock! Below are pictured my recycled trash 3D solids.
TEA-cher Time Giveaway!!
I am SO excited to be hosting a giveaway compliments of TRADITIONAL MEDICINALS® teas. They have a wonderful array of teas which are healthy and delicious. My favorite flavor is peppermint. Pictured below is the product sample package that they will be sending the lucky winner. I was so surprised when I received this in the mail because the sample was so nicely packaged. There is a ceramic mug (made in the USA I might add) three boxes of teas, a tote bag, and a tea sampler with different types of teas arranged ever so neatly in a wooden box. The teas all come packaged with descriptions of their health benefits.
I will be choosing one winner at random who comments below on the following prompt. Only U.S. residents may apply. The contest will be open until next Saturday at 11:59 p.m. CST.
Since spring is approaching, comment below about your favorite most creative math lesson or activity for spring. If you don’t do anything special for the season of spring, just tell us about your favorite math lesson.
How Can You Reach Parents During Family Night?
When looking for items to place at a table during family night for parents, I stumbled across some great info already made on a website. I took this info, and copied and pasted it into Microsoft Word with some cute fonts and borders. I would offer you my final product here, but I would be infringing on copyright. I will give you the links I used instead.
Ideas to Help Your Child Succeed and Enjoy Mathematics
Why Math Looks Different to Parents than When They Grew Up
And there is even a power point that you can play for parents–ready made!
See isn’t this great!
Do You Need an Idea for Family Math Night?
As promised, here are a few snapshots of our Family Math Event/100th Day of School Celebration!
Students built number bonds with Legos, and got to take a few Legos home!
Students built 10 groups of 10 to make 100 with different small food items. This was one of kids’ favorites since food was involved!
As you can see in the picture above, this is one of the staff members that dressed up like she was 100 years old. She said she got her whole outfit at Good Will for $4 with the exception of her wig from Party City.
Students played Race to 100 on the 100’s chart with dice. They rolled and added the number that they rolled each time on their 100’s chart.
Double dice subtraction is a game idea taken from the Georgia Department of Education resources.
How creative! This teacher made a multiplication/division edition of chutes and ladders complete with spinner. Kids loved this activity.
Kids flocked to this booth where they made chocolate chip cookie dough. Students mixed up the dough in a gallon baggie to prevent mess. The math was in the measuring cups fractions. They had to figure out how many small measuring cups to use in lieu of the larger cup sizes. For example, if the recipe calls for a cup and a half of flour, how many times will you have to fill a 1/4 measuring cup?
We can’t forget the Estimation Station! The closest guesser got to go home with the jar including candy! We gave away five jars.
One of my personal favorites…maybe because it was my idea ;), is the 100 scavenger hunt. Students had to find index cards hidden around the cafeteria. Each card had an equation, but only some of the equations equaled 100. If the equation made 100, students could then bring it to the scavenger hunt booth for a prize.
Students used different fruits and vegetables to equal up to a pound in this next picture after first estimating.
At the probability booth students used fractions to predict the chances of landing on a variety of spinners. Students got to take home their own spinners.
We also had a technology table where students got to play math games on our schools mini laptops.
Moe’s Southwest grill kindly donated tortilla chips for us to have nachos! And, the church next door to our school kindly donated lemonade! We also got plastic sacks donated to us from a nearby restaurant so that students had a bag in which to place all of their take home math activities.
The kids went home with smiles!
A Few of the Best 100 Days of School Dress Up Costumes!
The following are some of the best 100 days of school dress up that we had. We incorporated our Math Family Night with our Students’ 100th day of School Celebration. I sent this letter that I used last year to inform parents of the day’s dress up celebration. Again I used a rubric I adapted from Ms. Saoud’s blog at Primary Graffiti here.
Which costume do you like best?
Which child’s costume do you think won?
I’ll tell you at the end of the post! 🙂
My favorites are the “Name Your Own Star” –how clever…and the wrestlers belt–how creative! I also especially like the student in the school uniform with the notes safety pinned to her because it looks very kid done! Each note has a different word on it.
Here is my favorite staff dress up outfit. 
We also had a couple of staff members who dressed up like they were a hundred years old. They had walkers and all! One of our staff members had a sign on her front that said I am 100 years old. On her back she had a question that asked, “When was I born?” The kids had to bring her the answer written on a piece of paper.
I have a thing for puffballs, so I used 100 puffballs to make a scarf of sorts. It didn’t quite turn out like I had wanted. I used hot glue, so it was a bit stiff. I glued all the puffballs to a ribbon. Maybe if I was more of a seamstress it could have been a real scarf! Nevertheless the kids loved the scarf and wanted to touch the puffs. I gave the scarf away to one of the kids who asked me if he could have it at the end of the day. 
I guess you get to see my totally cute new phone cover in the picture, too! What an added perk! 🙂
To answer your question if you were wondering which child won from above, the first picture won of the little girl in the red shirt with all of the beads hanging down from safety pins.
Coming Soon This Weekend…All My Family Math Night Events!!!
Be watching this weekend for lots of pictures of the fun…..
My Favorite Fraction Tools
I wanted to share with you these new tools that I ordered for this year. I knew that we would be studying a lot of fractions, and we only had the linear models for a class set. Normally, when introducing fractions I start out with whole sheets of colored paper and have students cut them apart into halves, thirds, fourths, and so on. Then students can lay these pieces of paper on each other to find equivalent fractions. While this has value for students understanding that fractions are parts of a whole (piece of paper), students tend not to cut them out perfectly, so their equivalence investigation is a bit skewed. Because of this I move to manipulatives for the equivalence investigation, but again, I only had tools that were linear models…so here is what I ordered… Foamy fraction squares!
What is even better than the fact that they are brightly colored and quiet?
They are exactly the same size as a base ten block! This makes teaching decimal equivalents so much easier! I know the shadow makes the base ten block look larger but, they really are the same size.
See!
Students can easily see that one-half equals five-tenths, one-fifth equals two tenths, and one tenth equals ten hundredths.
I ordered a class set of these from EAI education here. I promise I make no money from telling you about these, but they make teaching fractions so much easier. Every teacher who has used them loves them!
Have You Ever Thought to Use These in Preparation for Coin Counting?
Do you know how they have those clearance buggies near the checkout at Wal-mart? Well, I just happened across these poker chips yesterday, and I got them for…get this…50 cents! YAY! When I saw them, they immediately reminded me of the money activities I created, and how I prepare students to count coin values first before adding real coins. Look how similar they look to the money sheet from my unit below. The only thing is that there aren’t chips that would resemble pennies, but I am still going to use these next time for their manipulative factor. Students can practice adding on 5’s and 10’s to 25’s. If you would like a free sample of the page below from my money activities, just click the download preview button on TPT!
Could This Be the Reason Students Confuse Many Word Problems?
After years of seeing students mix up math operations in word problems, I have finally figured out how to help students understand what operation to use in word problems. This little word is causing students much of the confusion–EACH. Haven’t we all taken for granted that students understand what this word means. The word ‘each’ is in nearly every multiplication and division problem, but many students don’t know what it means–every one in the group. If we teach students to read a word problem and replace the word each with its meaning, every one in the group, students somehow have a light bulb experience.
In conjunction with teaching students to understand the word each, also asking them questions about the problem helps facilitate understanding. For example when you ask, “Is this a joining or a separating situation,” students start to make sense of word problems. Students generally understand that words like altogether and in all mean that they are joining groups. The word total may need to be taught as a word that means in all, but total isn’t a difficult term for students to become comfortable with.
To help students further differentiate between multiplication and addition, ask questions like: are we adding the same amount over and over or are we adding two different sized groups? If the answer is adding the same amount over and over, then multiplication is repeated addition of equal sized groups. If students are confusing division and subtraction, ask, “are we subtracting different amounts or are we subtracting the same sized amounts over and over. If the answer is subtracting the same amounts over and over, then teach students that division is repeated subtraction of equal groups.
