Henry and Mudge

Estimation...Cookie Station Another fun EATING activity.

Estimation is one of the hardest skills that I have to teach. My students firmly believe estimation means to count. That is not it at all. I want them to use the information they know to predict a great answer. NOT just GUESS!

We do this cookie activity to introduce estimation. Each student gets a cookie. I began by rambling off that there are 1 billion chocolate chips in 1 cookie, 300, 295. Of course the students are like no way. They have a pretty great understanding of spatial sense. I then introduce the term estimation and we discuss. The way we use prior knowledge with this activity is by counting the chocolate chips on top of the cookie, therefore we know that it has to be more then that number. I have the student write their number on one side of the paper towel with crayons. Another lesson inside of that is because they feel as when their answer is wrong they can erase it and change it AFTER we count.

They then began to break the cookie up sorting the cookie from the chocolate chips. They group them to make the chocolate chips easier to count. Some students get really picky and refuse to have any sight of a piece of the cookie in their chocolate chip pile.

They will then count the chocolate chips again and write the correct answer on the opposite side of the paper towel. They get to see how close they were or how far away. Believe it or not a few students hit it right on the nose. So awesome! Of course they get to eat the crumbs that are left. They truly get a better understanding of estimation. Who wouldn't with food involved?



Twinkie Place Value

Who doesn't like to eat in class. We are on our discovering numbers unit. The students answered word problems showing tens and ones on the Twinkies. All you need to do the activity is pretzel sticks (place value), gummies with large wholes (tens and ones), and a cake (holder). We only do tens and ones. SO we have 2 pretzel sticks with two different color gummies.

They got to use the MIMIO to read the problem and help them solve the problem. The picture looks exactly like their actually Twinkies and sticks.

They did a great job working together to illustrate the problem. They each had a job. One person had to get the tens, the other the ones, and the other had to form the number. Everyone was on task! OF course being able to eat it afterwards if they did their best had nothing to do with it....LOL!

Celebrating Dr. Suess's Birthday

Who knows what was so special about today?
 Yay it was Dr. Suess birthday. My class celebrated by completing many activities using Dr. Suess books.
Our first activity was of course to make a Cat in the Hat, hat. We put rhyming words on the white strips and used butcher paper for the headband.

We also read the books The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Who would have ever thought Dr. Suess books would take twenty minutes to read. LOL! They were GREAT though. Not once did I have to redirect my kids attention. We compared and contrasted these two books and made a foldable. The students got to drag the story elements to the correct part of the venn diagram using our MIMIO. I"ll add those pictures later. Sorry : (

We then read the book I Can Lick 30 Tigers. We have been talking about how we can group items to make them easier to count. The students picked an object and grouped them by 2's, 5's, or 10's. They then wrote about it.

After lunch we reflected about the character The Cat in the Hat by formulating adjective and adjective phrases describing him. The student got to write different adjectives on the MIMIO to help them finish their circle map. I got this idea from a website on the Dr. Suess Linking Party. Sorry I don't have the exact address but definitely think it was creative. My kids enjoyed making these.

We didn't get to finish all the activities, but the kids enjoyed every bit of the day. We will continue to do a few more actvities the rest of the week and I will add them too.

Happy Birthday Dr. Suess!!!