Kids love geometry. It’s so hands-on. At least, it should be. I can’t imagine trying to teach kids geometry without letting them draw, cut, design, build. 3-D geometry taught on paper? I don’t think so! Unless, of course, you’re designing nets. And that’s exactly what I did with a group of sixth graders. We were working on volume and I thought it would be fun to re-design the soda can. It required a lot of hands-on work that involved graph…
Here is a super easy activity to do with student who are learning multiplication. I use patterned paper or wrapping paper cut into 8.5 x 11. I place them in sheet protectors and students use wet erase markers to circle groups of a given number. In this example, groups of 4 are being circled. Then students write the equation. An example could be: 4 x 8 = 32. This is a great activity for younger students who are learning to…
Tying in pointillism are during a unit on fractions, decimals, and percents is perfect! How? It begins with painter Georges Seurat. Seurat was a post-impressionist painter who painted by placing tiny, preceise brush strokes of different colors close to one another so they blend at a distance. I share with the students his painting The Circus and we discuss the patience it probably took to paint the whole thing using tiny dots! I then pass out loupes and colored comics…
Kids who have strong number sense understand what numbers are, how they relate to each other, and the affects that different operations have on them. These kids can easily compose and decompose numbers and are able to make reasonable estimates making computation much easier. In other words, kids with strong number sense are comfortable with numbers. And when kids are comfortable with numbers, math becomes much easier. The good news is, helping our children develop a strong sense of numbers…
See how simple objects like tiles, stickers, rubber stamps, dice, and graph paper help teach students important concepts in number theory: factors, primes, composites, and square numbers…not to mention the great reinforcement of multiplication facts. Grades 2 – 5 To get the pdf version, click here. If you do any of these activities with your kids/students, let me know how it goes!