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Power Packs: Building Number Sense in Grades 4/5

Power Packs: Building Number Sense in Grades 4/5

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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Family Math Night What Do You Notice? Posters

Family Math Night What Do You Notice? Posters

Last night I held my first Family Math Night event.  It was fabulous.  I had 31 student Station Facilitators – the most ever.  And every one of them did an amazing job.  Here’s a photo of them right before we opened the doors.  Can you find the principal in there? But what I really want to share with you are my upcoming What Do You Notice? posters.  You get to see them before anyone else.  Except for the first one…

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Rubber Stampin’ Math – Part 1

Rubber Stampin’ Math – Part 1

I know it’s not quite spring yet but I’m a little anxious for it to start.  It seems like it’s been a long winter.  So, to encourage spring to get a move-on, I did a little spring cleaning.  And that’s when I re-discovered my drawer full of rubber stamps and colorful stamp pads. These stamps and stamp pads were a staple in my third, fourth, and fifth grade classroom.  And when I ran centers in K-2, I used them there,…

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STEAM Family Math Night Collaborative Projects: Soccer Ball

STEAM Family Math Night Collaborative Projects: Soccer Ball

Get kids excited about science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) with this fun hands-on collaborative project. Typically done during a Family Math Night event, this project can also be done in the classroom. The best part is, each person is individually represented in the final product! Students will learn what makes a soccer ball through an introduction to 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional geometry. The lesson plan includes the mathematical background and useful vocabulary along with a link to the video…

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Family Math Night What Do You Notice? Poster

Family Math Night What Do You Notice? Poster

Here’s my latest What Do You Notice? poster from a recent Family Math Night event.  The nice thing about these posters is that they’re open-ended which allows for anyone to respond.  For this one, I decided to make a venn diagram.  But I didn’t draw the usual circles.  Instead I drew two hexagons.  This created the rhombus (parallelogram) in the center. The categories I used for the numbers were even numbers and multiples of 5.  That said, anything appropriate would have…

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