As I was thinking about my ‘What Do You Notice?’ poster for my Nifty Numbers Family Math Night event last night, it seemed natural to tie it in with numbers. So here’s the poster I created. As with all my ‘What Do You Notice’ posters, they can be “answered” on a variety of levels. This one can go all the way to algebraic equations. And that’s what makes them so much fun. Everyone can do them! What I loved about…
We spend more time estimating with numbers than actually crunching them. Estimation Jars are great ways to help kids learn to make reasonable estimates. And to help, check out our NEW Estimation Jar Slips! Copy/paste this link to get the pdf. And feel free to share with others! http://www.familymathnight.com/pdf/EstimationJarSlips.pdf
I’ve been wanting to try out an idea I had for our Family Math Night events and, since we were trying out our newest kit, Gellin’ with Geometry, it was the perfect opportunity. My idea was to have a project that all the participants contributed to so that at the end of the event, we would have one big something to share. In keeping with the geometry theme, I decided to include a station where participants could made one honeycomb…
I love the idea of having at least one What do you notice? posters at our Family Math Night events. I started it last year when I did an event at an IB school and the two teachers I was working with wanted to tie in some of the IB inquiry philosophy. It was really fun to watch the kids standing in front of the posters trying to ‘notice’ things. Besides, they got an extra Estimation Jar slip for…
Patterns. It was always a theme throughout the school year in my mathematics classes. So to kick-off patterns, during the first week of school, the students create a color pattern using their name. Then, we discuss the patterns made by names of different lengths. It may seem like a simple activity, but some great conversations can be generated when students focus on the reasons why certain patterns appear. For example, in the photo above, there are 15 squares in each…