Making a Mother's Day Gift That's Also Educational

It's almost Mother's Day (May 8th!) and with that being said, it's time to plan a great classroom Mother's Day gift! My favorite gift involves some educational activities too!

Truffula Trees from The Lorax!

If you're doing gifts, why not tie in Earth Day and Mother's Day? I love to read The Lorax and then plant "Truffula Seeds" for the moms (or grandmas or dads!) You can read more about what I've done in the past, here. It's a great time to discuss our impact on the environment and what we can do to be better to our Mother Nature.

We plant some seeds in order to get more plants and flowers into the world! Some fast growing seeds include sunflowers, daisies, or zinnias. They typically sprout within 5-7 days (!!!!). I buy cheap pots, some acrylic paint, seeds, and soil to prepare. Then, I spend a day decorating and painting the pots with my students. The next day we plant our seeds in their pots using the soil and whichever seeds I've chosen!

Using my Plant Power lesson plans, students track the growth of their plant. From there we'll spend a few weeks measuring the growth, and the mean, median, and mode of the plant's height. It always helps my kiddos get more comfortable with these important math ideas and it's fun! Be sure to order your supplies (via Amazon Prime) this week in order to have flowers by Mother's Day!

A Simple Strategy for Introducing Division & Free Powerpoint!

Happy weekend, friends!

Last week was a four day week (thank you Election Day!) and I soaked up every minute of that day off.  Now we're in that beautiful downhill stretch to Christmas Break.  Too early?

My class this year is uber procedural and has a hard time discussing ANNNNYTHING.

Me:  What's your favorite book we've read?
Student:  Frindle.
Me:  Oh that's a good one! How come?
Student:  ............ It was good.
Me:  Any other reasons?
Student:  ... I liked it.
Me:  Okay.  Anyone else?
Class:  Chirp, chirp....

So I've really been working on dragging out some of our conversations.  This is especially important in math.  If we can discuss math, then I know they've got it (or don't).  I was super nervous as we began our unit on division this week.  I knew we'd need something basic but purposeful.  So I whipped up some amazing super duper squares.  On colored paper.  So, nothing earth shattering or crazy.  But WHOA.  I paired it with this SIMPLE powerpoint, and ta-da!  We're on our way to understanding division - the first step!

I just created an array on powerpoint {because I tried in Word and why would anyone ever create anything in Word anymore?  Oh my word {HA!} and then printed and had my kiddos cut.  {I don't know about y'all, but cutting takes foreeever.  I always put a timer up and give them like 2 minutes.  If they don't finish, then we discuss how to multi task and I move on while they wrap up}.

So then I popped up this PPT {grab it fo' FREE aqui} and we discussed what we already knew about division, what words represented division, and if we knew any division facts off the top of our head.  {My kiddos didn't}.  So then we moved on to some division problems, discussing what a division problem LOOKS like, and then began dividing.  We started with 24 little squares and dividing 24 by 4.  I was amazed at all the different ways my kiddos divided 24 into 4 equal groups!

Look at all the strategies just for 24 divided by 4!

Some  counted out 4 at a time, others created four groups, and others used arrays!  This led into some great sharing and CONVERSING about the different strategies.  How do we know what the answer is?  What is the correct way to solve this?  Is there a "correct" way?  We continued to use 24 and divide by basic numbers {no remainders for us quite yet}.  This simple strategy paired with genuine conversation and questioning, really helped my kiddos start to grasp this thing we call division.  I plan on doing the same thing tomorrow but with a new number.

I know this is beyond simple, but I knew I needed my kiddos to really have a part in the making of 24 {cutting out the array} and then dividing it up on their own.  I am so glad I did because I saw SO many lightbulbs come on.  Now I need to work on carrying this over into those bigger numbers.  Any suggestions?

Have a great rest of the weekend!  Cheers!

Place Value Decomposition in 4th Grade

Math, y'all, may be the death of me.  I am a writer.  I love teaching writing.  I get writing.  Lo and behold, I feel comfortable teaching it.  What I don't get however, is math.  And how to get deep-deep-deep-down there where my learners are developing a conceptual understanding.   I try.  I question.  I explain.  I have them explain, share, think, and question.  But in all honesty, I just don't feel like it's getting my mathematicians to the place they need to be.

We've been studying place value as 4th graders.  And although we've been using base ten blocks, place value cards, First to 1,000, and many other strategies, it just wasn't clicking like it needed to.  One of my sweet n' lows just had the most frustrated look during math.  And I felt horrible!  Then all of a sudden, I stumbled upon this gem online somewhere.  Originally I printed it out for my learners.  But I realized that three pages for each student + lots of cutting would take up far too much time for me.  And I wasn't about to cut it all out myself.  Aint nobody got time for that... So I moved to the next best thing, the Elmo, and cut out one set myself.  So simple.  Number cards, and 1's, 10's, 100's, 1,000's, and on and on- up to billion. 

We laid out our cards and I asked the big question... "So, what's the value of this 2?"  "My little one's hand shot up.  SHOT UP, y'all.  "Two thousand" she proudly shared.  And my day was made. 

Obviously I got ahead of myself with this picture- we still needed seven thousands.  But you get the gist!

This also helped reinforce the big idea that each place value to the left is TEN TIMES the previous number.  Which we had a rough time grasping. 

Maybe you're looking for someway to connect this concept with your kiddos too.  Or you want to review a bit.  Grab this simple, simple, simple activity here!