Inspired by Nature

Inspired by nature we are representing our understanding of the changing of the seasons through art. 

Some patterning emerged in our work! Math and art go so well together!

Shamrock Estimate

We invited children to examine a jar of shamrocks today and make their best estimate of how many were in the jar. We were impressed by their reasonable guesses - 54, 67, 81, etc. - as this shows they have a solid number sense. No estimate was unreasonable (0, 1 000 000). 

We used a 100 chart to help us organize the shamrocks into an accurate count since it was such a large collection. 

There were 81! The children were excited to realize their estimates were so close!

Number Line Jump

In pairs each person takes turns rolling three or more dice. 

Subitize and add or count the dots to find the total. 

Find your place on the number line. Working with teen numbers can sometimes be tricky so this game encourages practise!

Person with the highest number wins!

Adding Links

We used probability tools with links today to encourage and reinforce subitizing, adding, and measuring concepts with children. Players had a choice of using a spinner or dice. 

The purpose of the activity was to spin or roll in order to arrive at a number. 

Then the child added that many links to the chain. 

The more rolls or spins the longer the chain became!

Rich measurement talk emerged as the children noticed how long their chain was growing and compared their chains to see who had the most links (or longest chain)! The longer the chain, the higher number of links the child had which challenged them to work with large numbers. 

Some children even walked around the room with their chain, trying to find things that were the same length or to find things that were longer/shorter than it!

An added bonus? The work with links helped children practise and persist with fine motor skills!

Is it Spring?

It sure felt like spring today! The children enjoyed spending time playing outside. 

Letter Roll and Stamp

We wanted to continue to encourage children to practise identifying upper and lowercase letters. We placed letter dice, stampers, and letter cards out. 

The children were encouraged to roll the dice, identify the letters, and stamp the corresponding letters on the paper. 

We also went on a scavenger hunt and cut and pasted matching letters from magazines in order to explore how letters can be written using different fonts. 

Exploring Spring Bulbs

We recycled the potted spring flowers from our still life art into an exploration of bulbs and root systems today. Children were invited to use tools like tweezers and magnifying glasses to gently untangle the roots and bulbs from the soil. 

There was some interesting talk as children used specialized vocabulary to describe their process and observations and compared the bulbs to each other. They noticed that different bulbs had various sizes, shapes and colours of bulbs and roots.