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Category: Problem-Solving

Grid Dots: A Family Math Night ‘What Do You Notice?’ poster

Grid Dots: A Family Math Night ‘What Do You Notice?’ poster

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Grid Dots

Skills:
K-2: subitizing, counting, colors, shapes, pattern
3-5: counting, shapes, even, odd, addition, subtraction, multiplication

Subitizing, being able to quickly recognize the total amount without having to count each member of the group, is an important part of developing number sense. In the primary grades, students who subitize are able to count on from the subitized number. In upper elementary, students can use subitizing to break a larger group into smaller equal groups to find the total. In this 10 x 10 grid, I used colored sticky dots to create opportunities for students to subitize.

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What Do You Notice? Magic Square

What Do You Notice? Magic Square

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Skills:
K-2: counting, number recognition, comparing, geometric shapes
3-5: even/odd numbers, addition/subtraction

In a magic square, all the rows, columns, and diagonals add to the same number. In our case, the numbers all add to 70. Usually, a magic square starts off with a few numbers filled in and participants figure out all the missing numbers. For this activity, though, I wanted participants to focus on the numbers in the grid so I only left two small squares empty.

At a beginning level, students can simply notice that there are numbers and point to numbers they recognize. They can count how many of each digit they see. Some of these students may even be able to “read” some of the double-digit numbers.

Some participants will notice squares. The grid is a 4 by 4 so there are 16 squares for numbers. (There are technically a lot more than 16 total squares and this may be a challenge to put out to the older students.)

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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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What Do You Notice? Number Theory

What Do You Notice? Number Theory

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Skills:
K-2: counting, skip counting, patterns, even/odd numbers
3-5: even/odd numbers, patterns, multiples, factors, multiplication, common multiples, prime/composite numbers

When students learn to skip count* they are reciting the multiples of the number they started with. It’s a great early introduction to multiplication. This poster is a horizontal representation of some of the multiples for numbers 1 – 23 which are represented by different colors. For example, multiples of 1 are magenta; multiples of 2 are yellow; 3 are green, etc.

Factors are the numbers multiplied together to arrive at another number. For example, 2 and 3 are the factors that, when multiplied, result in the product 6. This poster shows the factors of each number vertically. The factors of 6 are: 1 (magenta), 2 (yellow), 3, (green), and 6 (blue).

1 x 6 = 6 and 2 x 3 = 6

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What Do You Notice? Gumballs

What Do You Notice? Gumballs

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So this was a super fun What Do You Notice? poster I created for my last Family Math Night event. Not only is it colorful, but who doesn’t like gumball machines?!

Skills:
K-2: counting, even numbers, skip counting by twos, comparison
3-5: probability, fractions, money

This is a fun one simply because of the fun gumballs and gumball machine. That said, there is still a lot of math going on. Young students can count the number of different colored gumballs. They can compare colored gumballs to see which color has the least and which color has the most. They can even count all the gumballs to arrive at a total.

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