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Category: Algebra

What Do You Notice? Lego Blocks

What Do You Notice? Lego Blocks

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Skills:
K-2: counting, subitizing, geometric shapes
3-5: skip counting, repeated addition, multiplication, beginning algebra

Although there are no numbers represented, this What Do You Notice? poster is filled with number concepts. Young students should be able to quickly recognize that there are 4 circles on each square (subitizing). From there, they can decide how they want to count circles. Maybe they want to count just the circles on the pink squares or blue squares. Or maybe they want to count all the circles to arrive at the total number. Others may notice the squares and decide to count how many squares there are all together.

Older students can use repeated addition to determine the total number of squares (4 + 4 + 4 or 3 + 3 + 3 + 3) or they can multiply 3 x 4 or 4 x 3.

There are a variety of ways these students can determine the total number of circles: skip counting by fours; determining the total number of circles in a row and multiplying that by 3; multiplying the total number of squares by 4, multiplying 6 circles x 8 circles, etc.

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What Do You Notice? Scales

What Do You Notice? Scales

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Skills:
K-2: counting, number recognition, comparing, addition/subtraction, logic/reasoning skills, geometric shapes
3-5: logic/reasoning skills, addition/subtraction, beginning algebra

This scale weight problem is a fun way to introduce algebraic thinking. Although for the young students, simply recognizing numbers and counting the animals is good enough. They can even describe the geometric shapes used to make the scales.

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Power Packs: Building Number Sense in Grades 4/5

Power Packs: Building Number Sense in Grades 4/5

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I’m excited to share with you that our Building Number Sense in Grades 4-5 Power Pack is now available. All of our Power Packs are filled with games that teach parents strategies and tools to help their children build strong math skills.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there have been a lot of changes in mathematics curriculum and pedagogy in recent years and a lot of parents don’t feel as prepared as they’d like to be when it comes to helping their child in math. The power of these Power Packs comes in the integration of strategies and tools that parents use as they play the games with their children. While playing the games, not only are parents learning about the new standards, they’re also gaining strategies they can use to help their child in math.

The strategies and tools in our 4/5 Power Pack are:

  • Partial Products Multiplication
  • Partial Quotients Division
  • Distributive Property for single- and multi-digit multiplication
  • Front End Estimation
  • Fraction Bars
  • Multiplying Fractions on a Number Line
  • Rounding
  • Order of Operations
  • Standard Algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division
  • Multiplication Strategies for Multiples of 10

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Play-N-Take and Make-N-Take Logos

Play-N-Take and Make-N-Take Logos

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                            Our logos for our Family Math Night Take-Home kits are done!  A little behind schedule but all good things are worth the wait! These Take-Home kits were designed to continue the learning at home! Here are the deets: Send your families home with games they can play over and over. Used to supplement a Family Math Night event or use separately, these Take Home kits are…

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Rubber Stampin’ Math Part 2

Rubber Stampin’ Math Part 2

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Last time in Part 1 of Rubber Stampin’ Math we talked about dusting off those rubber stamps and using them to create expressions, equations, and arrays.  In Part 2, I’m going to share how I used them in second and third grade to introduce multiplication and how that translated to algebraic functions in fourth and fifth grade. Part 2:  Multiplication and Functions For these next activities, the type of rubber stamps students use is very important.  So let’s start with…

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