Tag Archive 'arithmetic'
Aug
06
2012
Mrs. Argus
What an exciting first day we had! The day was filled with singing, dancing, making friends, and learning new routines. Today during math workshop, the children were invited to explore one of our math manipulatives, unifix cubes. We sat in a circle and had an open discussion about their possible uses, not necessarily mentioning anything about “math”. Friends showed ways to create and build with them, including making letters and buildings. Then, our friend Beatrice shared something. “You can do math with these. Like patterns!” Friends then began making different types of AB and ABC patterns. Another friend, Addie, had another interesting idea. She explained how she could measure things with a long stick of unifix cubes. We had a lively discussion about measurement and began measuring things around our circle. Another friend, Lucas, suggested, “Hey, we should put all our sticks together and build something!” and J’Den enthusiastically replied, “Lets do it together!” The kids then took charge on their own, negotiating what piece would go where and eventually decided as a class to build a long line as far as the unifix cubes could go. It was so exciting to see different friends lead and others practice listening to one another. It was a memorable and valuable lesson in working together. Dylan worked as project manager and directed friends to certain ends of the line. Tajanaye, Kalaya and Sascha were gatherers. Amaiah cheered people on. Everyone had a role. When the class piece was finally finished, we sat down and talked about what math had just taken place. Friends mentioned patterning, counting, measurement, and general building. We also talked about how we had worked together and labeled it as teamwork! What an incredible experience for only the first day of school.
- Addie shares what she discovered. “You can measure things, like this.”
- Hutton and J’Den work together to add to the class piece.
- Cariah counts the class piece.
Later on in the day, we practiced telling stories with materials and shared our stories with one another. Some of our friends had some very creative ideas. We sure have some great storytellers in our room.
Ayden explains his bear story to Mr. Henderson, our student teacher, during Story Workshop.
It wouldn’t be a complete day in the Argus classroom if there wasn’t any dancing. Today, we danced to some 80’s pop hits. Tomorrow, who knows?!
Greyson and Jackson play some air guitar during explore time. How creative!
Tags: arithmetic, capable, collaboration, friendship, thinking
Apr
18
2012
Mrs. Argus
This week during math, all of our classes are learning about the meaning of money and investigating pennies. Each class had a special “sale” today that involved children spending a number of pretend pennies to build a particular item. Our class created worm puppets! Each child had a shopping list yesterday and had to choose which types of embellishments they wanted to add. It’s important to note that the embellishments cost different amounts of pennies and the children didn’t have enough pennies to purchase all of the items. The kids practiced prioritizing! Today, the kids were given ten pennies and their shopping list to look over. They then took their shopping list to the worm store and purchased materials to create their worm puppets. Very exciting! After the puppets were assembled, we took them outside and introduced them to our garden space.
Tags: arithmetic, creativity
Apr
17
2012
Mrs. Argus
Miss Christen from Sharp community garden comes for a visit!
Yesterday, we were visited by a friend from Sharp Community Garden, Miss Christen. Miss Christen talked to us about how her organization set up a community garden to support families that didn’t have fresh fruits and vegetables. We learned that the garden is right over by Butler University (across from St. Thomas) and anyone can volunteer time to work and eat from the garden. We had a long list of questions for Miss Christen about how to go about starting a garden. How much should we water? How long will ours take to grow? Does her garden have bees and worms? Should we plant everyday? What should we do about weeds? Miss Christen was even kind enough to invite us to see her garden and help with planting in a few weeks. She offered to come assist us with ours as well. (We are currently waiting to hear back from our Butler friends in the leadership class about funding for some garden boxes and garden equipment- very exciting!)
One of our questions for Miss Christen was where to put our garden. She suggested somewhere where there is lots of sun (at least six hours), good soil, and water can get to it easily. After her suggestions, we decided to take a walk outside our building into the “yard” area on the north side of the building and look for space. After exploring for quite a bit, we found a space we felt comfortable with! Ruth commented there were hardly any weeds in that relative area. David said that there was plenty of light and it would get lots of rain. For the rest of our time, we decided to play and explore our new found garden space more. As this was happening, some very interesting things happened. First, friends started collecting weeds to protect our new garden space. Children started running at full speed down a sloped space and grabbing weeds as they ran. Ruth explained, “Its a game- I call it Weed Runner! Try to not stop while you grab them!” More and more friends joined in on the fun.
Friends also began placing their handfuls of weeds in a rectangular shape around our proposed garden sight to mark its location. This led to a class discussion on shapes today and what shapes our garden boxes could be in. We went back outside again today and showed one another shapes that our garden could be in.
- Cameron shows us what a crescent shape is.
Tags: arithmetic, collaboration, garden, image of the child, problem solving, thinking
Feb
07
2012
Mrs. Argus
Our new daily agenda.
As we continue our study of clocks and telling time, we have decided to change something in our room- our daily agenda. We had an old daily agenda in our room, but it was not something we referred to often after the beginning of the year and the kids did not have much interest in it. Yesterday morning, a handful of friends helped me take down the old agenda and begin a new one. Our experiences at the lab school and in years at previous schools have shown us that if the kids have a part in creating something, they are far more likely to use and refer to it than if it is store bought or teacher created. The children helped me think of each part of our day in sequential order, such as morning meeting, writer’s workshop, lunch, math workshop etc. We then wrote them on strips of paper and added them to our new agenda board. Then, more friends helped illustrate pictures of each activity. During morning meeting, friends noticed something else that was new to the agenda- some clocks! Several drawings of clocks were added to different parts of the day to indicate when each part begins (relatively). After making these changes, Miss Schmidt and I noticed all day friends were referring to the agenda and checking the time. Success!
Tags: arithmetic, collaboration, time
Jan
25
2012
Mrs. Argus
Kaitlyn offers Aidan his preference on marker color choice for our new game. FRIENDSHIP!
- Jenesis works on the new game.
As you may know, have been investigating measurement during Math Workshop. To continue practicing measurement with a ruler, Miss Schmidt invented a new game that the kids absolutely love. Here are some pictures of our friends working together on the new game.
- Cameron helps Da’Sean measure with his ruler.
Tags: arithmetic, friendship, problem solving
