Place value math game: squirrel grove

Earlier this year we did a place value lesson with squirrels, gnomes, and squirrel hotels carved out of trees.  This is a game we created to go along with the place value lesson. We took it out again this week & reviewed place value, and added the millions manor.

This is how to make & play squirrels Grove.

To play each player rolls the die.

The players draws from the stone bag as many stones as the number they rolled with the die. So if I roll a 5, I would draw 5 stones. The player then places the stones in the hollows of the trees, and says the number that was created. In this instance I drew 5, and the number created was 30, 264 or thirty thousand, two hundred sixty four.

The next part is totally optional, as it may make it competitive. I realize this may be undesirable when you are trying to build a child’s confidence in math. We created a second board that is a great deal like snakes & ladders. When a player says their number correctly they move the same number of places on the game board as the number they made has stones. So if I had said the number above correctly, I would move 5 spaces since my number was made with 5 stones. We used nuts as game pieces. The first person to reach the 3 trees of squirrel grove wins.

To make the game you will need:

• 3 small posterboards or thick papers
• small flat river rocks like you would find in the floral dept, black is best.
• a die or 2 if you have different levels of players
• crayons, preferably beeswax ones
• something such as bag or bowl for the stones
• string, or yarn
• optional paper for snakes & ladders type board

First, create the playing boards. Have the child/ren draw large trees with hollows large enough to place your stones in. You will need 3 trees. You may only use the hundreds tree if your child is in 1st grade, but you can add more trees as the child’s knowledge of place value grows. My daughter is in 3rd & we now work on place value up to the hundred millions. Use a hole punch to make holes on the edges & tie the trees together. The whole thing can be folded up & put away when you are done playing.

Next, take the stones & paint numbers from 0 to 9. I used a paint pen, but acrylic with a brush will work just as well.You will need a die. It does not matter what numbers are on the die. You can always place stickers over the existing numbers &  write what ever numbers you like.  A child that is only working with values up to the hundreds place may need a die with only 1, 2, & 3 each appearing twice on the die. A standard 1 to 6 die may be just what you need. Right now the die we are using has 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, & 3.

You can then create the snakes & ladders type board to go along with the game. This is optional, but my daughter really likes it. It was her idea. We use nuts as game pieces.  It is a simple, but very effective game. It really helps them be able to read larger numbers correctly by allowing them to really see how the placement created the value. Such as 246 could be only that, or it could be 246 thousand, or 246 million depending on which tree (or place) it is in. regardless of where it is, it is still said the same way. The stones can be used in any number of ways in simple math games. Such as pick 4 stones & add them. Pick 2 stones, and multiply them, ect. I hope this tutorial makes sense. If you have questions just place them in the comments section, and I will reply ASAP.

This is a picture my daughter drew when we did this lesson in 2nd grade. She did it in her free time on her own because she loved the math story & lesson so much. 

This weeks lessons: the Ojibwe

This weeks lessons focused on the Ojibwe people of the great lakes region. I could have easily taken a month or two on them. I began with the story of Turtle Island, modern day north america. I told this story http://www.gct3.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/creation_story.pdf . It was a wonderful transition story to use to create a bridge from old testament legends  into our native american block. The Ojibwe creation story of Turtle Island is similar to the Noah story in that the earth is flooded by the creator because people had become wicked. Instead of a chalkboard illustration I decided to do a watercolor. I wish I could have taken more time on it, but it served it’s purpose. My DD put the story in  her new native stories main lesson  book.

We learned about how the pre-contact Ojibwe lived. We learned about birch trees that grow where they live/d, and how the bark is removed in sheets and used to create shelters called wigwams, canoes to travel through the lakes on, and buckets for harvesting things. My DD put a paragraph about wigwams, and an illustration in her shelters main lesson book. I put an Ojibwe prayer on the board, and we recited it throughout the week.

We talked very briefly about wild rice, a staple of the Ojibwe. We will return to it when we do our small block on the grains.

We had a great time making a dome shaped hut from newspapers. This was the part of our lessons that was enjoyed the most. It reminded me of the dome shape of a wigwam. It was pretty simple to make, not to mention the bonus of it being absolutely free! You can find a great tutorial at pepper paints blog . Throw a lightweight sheet on, and you have a cosy little hide away ready for hours of play.

We worked on the number 8, and it’s times table through rhymes & tossing a beanbag.  Since it’s halloween we made a spider mobile, and put the 8 times table numbers of the spiders bodies.

We also learned the story of the dream catcher, and Ojibwe legend. We made a dream catcher from things we had around the house. We went outside, and cut some vines that were growing around a tree to make the hoop, and used hemp string for the web. I used a combination of this story & this story to make one smooth Dream Catcher story. 

I also checked out a few picture books about Ojibwe legends from the library.

Windigo’s Return- Great story about a monster from Ojibwe legend who eats people. It’s kind of scary, but has a humorous ending.

The Legend of The Lady Slipper-Beautiful tale about a brave girl who ventures into the night to save her people from a sickness that has stricken her entire village. Were were going to make mocassins in conjunction to this story, but ran out of time.

Ladder To The Sky- Another Ojibwe story with similarities to an Old testament legend. In this story the people lived in peace without sickness, or death, until someone disobeys the creator, and consequence ensues.

On friday we went to Brookgreen Gardens, about 30 minutes from our house. The most amazing trees east of the Redwood Forests are here at Brookgreen. If I were to move from here it would be the trees my heart would ache for.

The trees in the pics are magnificent by any standards, but are not the most amazing in the gardens. These were all in the native species zoo. My camera battery went dead before we got into the gardens, which are just completely enchanted. If you are ever near the mid-South Carolina coast, Brookgreen is a must see.

 

This weeks lessons:rainbows & doves & dolly costumes

If you read this blog you know it’s weird that I post this week’s lessons on Monday. I really just needed to go ahead & post them so that I could close the book, so to speak, on old testament legends (for now). We need to clean the slate & start fresh. Today we finished up the Noah/flood story. First we made easy origami doves which we colored. This was a great activity because this was a “folding story”. I retold the story of Noah as we did the folds. Each of the folds symbolized part of the story. I did a separate post on how to make the doves. If you hold their chests and move them up & down the wings & tail will flutter & appear to fly. My daughter just loved this, and made several of them. My daughter wrote the story in her book & did a few illustrations for it. We had a discussion about what it would be like to build such an enormous structure. Through out Noah we sang Shel Silverstein’s poem”Unicorn“. It is kind of silly, but most kids relish silliness. It tells of why the unicorns did not get on the Ark. There are several youtube videos of people doing it as a song if anyone wants to hear it. My dd likes to sing rather than recite, so I accomodate her when fitting.

We sculpted a few animals, and a rainbow from beeswax.

My daughter made her favorite doll “Posey” her Halloween costume. This served as handwork. Posey has been a constant companion since I made her when my daughter was 4. I have repaired holes, re-stitched hair, cleaned repeatedly, and even had to do a complete body replacement. A mean cousin  drew all over her face with a sharpie. That just devastated my daughter, but fortunately the most wonderful dry cleaners in the world at Conway Cleaners cleaned her up for us free of charge. Posey has reached Velveteen Rabbit status. She’s real. So it is only natural that she have her own costume. A is pretty good at working in 3 dimension. She hand sewed the gnome hat from a pattern she made herself. I was suprised to see a 3 panel gnome hat. That was not something I had ever thought of before, but it worked out well. She sewed pink wings onto the doll’s overalls.

So, thats all for now on the old testament legends. The remainder of the week we will work on wigwams made by the Ojibwe. We will hear about the beginning of Turtle Island, a story about a monster called Windigo that eats people & has a heart of ice, and the legend of the dream catcher, all three Ojibwe legends. We will draw, we will sew puckered moccasins, we will make a dream catcher to hang above our beds to capture any bad dreams that arise from all of the weird, scary, modern halloween images she takes in this time of year. Working from the spider theme of the dream catcher we will work on the 8 times table. I think since we are working on 8 in math our form drawing will reflect this too, although I am not sure what forms we will work on. I am thrilled to have a change, and I know my daughter is too.

easy paper folded doves, for Noah story or not

You need a square of paper. Any size or kind will do. You may not want to get above 9 or 10 inches as it would start to get too floppy.

Weekly math game: Bean Dip

We are trying to make & play a different math game every week. This is this week’s. It’s called Bean Dip. It is simple, inexpensive, and most importantly, very fun. We had more fun than I thought we would with this one. It was a huge success.

 

Materials needed:

• a bowl
• a scooper (we used one that came with a can of coffee)
• biggest dried beans you can find ( we used large limas $1.29)
• sharpie fine tip pen

How to make it & play it:

• Take your dried beans & write a number on each side at random. You will have to repeat each numerous times to get enough for your bowl. We added “wild beans” too. They can be used as any number you choose. Go light on the zeros. They do  nothing for the game, but a few are nice.
• When you have enough beans in the bowl to get a good scoop, take turns scooping out beans
• each player has to add up the beans they scooped onto the table. You can make it a competition if you like, but we just take turns and do not keep score.

My daughter wanted to take a turn again & again, with each turn trying to scoop up more beans than the previous time. At first she took very light scoops only scooping up 5 or six beans to add together, but after a few goes she was scooping as much as the scoop could hold.

This game was great at allowing her to see the relationship between numbers. She could sort them out into groups that equaled 10, then easily add the remaining beans, or she could group by number, and use her growing multiplication skills to add alot of numbers quickly. We made this game strictly for mental math. No gems or counters allowed, and no paper either.

Littler children can “play along” by taking scoops and just sorting into groups

 

 You can even have then work out multiplication problems with the beans

 

The rainbow snail-a game for math

 We went outside today for our circle time. I always do some kind of math movement in the morning. When we finished up with all of our songs & multiplication rhythms we went over to the driveway and drew a huge rainbow snail on the cement. It has 13 sections. One for the start, and the rest for numbers up to 12. The very center was blank, and was used to turn around in.

  I started this game with a fairly short story about the rainbow snail. I used the enchanted kingdom, gardener and witch from our 2nd grade epic math story of Alister & Amelia, mighty young twins born to a benevolent king & queen.  This snail lived in the garden, and was an enchanted snail, who was at the very least 600 years old. This snail was special. He could communicate with the gardener. He told him what crops were hungry for what nourishment, what plants needed more water, or were being eaten by pests. In this way he helped keep the kingdoms food supply healthy and abundant. He also knew which plants could make a person well if they fell ill, so this was another way he kept the kingdom healthy and at peace. There is a horrible witch, who for various reasons, wants to destroy the good kingdom. She knew this magic snail was needed dearly by the people, so she placed a spell on him so that he would forever be locked in his home.

  The gardener & the twins had to find a way to fix this, so they went to their kingdoms wise woman. She knew instantly what had happened to the rainbow snail, and told the children the only way to unlock the curse was to draw a huge rainbow snail on the ground.  Someone with a pure heart must then hop to the center of the spiral and back, gathering te secret number code as they travelled the spiral. When all of the numbers secret codes were gathered the snail would be set free.

You number the spaces from 1 to 12. We used large cork cubes to make huge dice. My daughter then rolled a dice to see what number she would skip count to. For example if she threw a 5 she would start at one, and skip count to the center, 5-10-15-20-25, ect, and back again 60-55-50-45-40, this would give her the “secret code”    This was a fun way to reinforce the times tables. Expect this to take at the very least an hour. It takes a while just to color the snail. This is what ours looked like. It was impossible to get a picture because of the size, and our driveway is so shady.

This week in lessons

We officially started our 3rd grade lessons on September 1st. We started with a math review. We did math stories, and movement in order to help solidify our knowledge of the multiplication tables.  My daughter began a multiplication main lesson book. This week we began our first complete week with farming. I introduced the lesson with a story I made up about a family who live on and operate an organic farm. I used Mellissa Neilsens idea of using a container story for your lessons. The family is of mixed heritage with the father being Jewish, and the mother Cherokee. The lessons we do on farming will be about the family and the work they do on their farm throughout the year. The old testament stories will be told by the jewish grandma when she visits, and the native american stories which we will use for weaving, pottery & houses, will come from the mother. Here is the blackboard drawing I did of the family farmhouse for the first lesson.

The next part of their story was about the work they had to do in the late summer/early fall. They have to cut & bring in the hay & straw to feed the animals in winter. The wheat should be nearly ready. They have to plant some root crops & winter greens for their market garden. We also talked about chickens & my daughter sculpted some from beeswax. I added the father & the oldest son loading hay into the cart to the blackboard drawing, and she put these lessons into her farming main lesson book.

 Each moring we started our day with circle time. An opening verse, and some singing & movement. We worked on one multiplication table each day through hand clapping, stepping, jumping, and rhymes. My daughter then worked out the table on her multiplication board, and then put the tables shape into the book along with the actual table & an illustration that represents the number.

 This week we included several of the activities of farming family did into our own life. We prepared a raised bed for planting turnips for our fall turnip lanterns. Turnips are fast growers, only taking 50 days. Hopefully ours will be ready in time. If not we will buy some locally, and eat ours.  We harvested a bushel of  field peas, and dug up peanuts at my Dad’s house.  The field peas were much harder to shell than they were to pick, but they are beautiful, nutritious, and easy to dry & store to use in winter.

 

 

 On Friday our farm family prepared for their jewish grandmother’s visit. When their grandmas arrived they baked challah for Friday’s Shabbat dinner. She told the children a story from her sacred book. This was the opener to the old testament stories. I told my daughter the story of how lucifer and his angels were cast out of heaven in preparation for starting the story of the days of creation next week. I used the version in Jakob Streit’s book “And There Was Light”.  This story came exactly when it was needed. Last week my daughter started being sarcastic, and back talking us. It seemed as though she thought she was our equal. In the story, Lucifer thought his garment was a bright as God Father’s, and that he could be a god too, just like God Father. He got together a band of lesser angels who forged him a throne, and he became their little god. God Father offered him a chance to see the error of his ways, but he did not want to change, and was cast out of the heavens by Michael into the cold depths below. When I told her this story, I could see on her face that she “got it”.  I haven’t had any back talk today. We will see if it sticks. We also made some challah for what was our very first Shabbat we will celebrate in 3rd grade. I used this recipe. I did add an extra egg, and another 1/2 cup sugar, but it was still not very sweet. It was excellent, probably the best bread I had ever made, and my daughter loved rolling out the dough snakes, and braiding them into the loaf. We made 2 loaves. I will use the leftovers to make a bread pudding.  

This morning we went to our little local farmers market in downtown Conway. We were able to pick up some wonderful locally grown produce. My daughter was attracted to a table that has baskets of huge, red, shiny apples. Next to them was a nice lady who had some equally large, but kind of ugly apples. I took my daughter over to talk to her. Her apples were organic, and grown only a few miles form our house. They did not have the pesticides, and fungicides that the beautiful apples grown who knows where) did. We bought the ugly apples. They were unbelievably good. This lead to a discussion of what sustainability means. It was also a good lesson in that not every thing is what it seems on the outside. We also were able to buy some locally grown, and processed peanut butter, locally grown & milled corn meal, and some aromatic rice that was grown only 60 miles away. South Carolina is one of the few places in North America where rice can be grown successfully. Rice plantations are enjoying a huge resurgence here. I couldn’t ne happier about that. A rice field is a thing of beauty.

We went home and had some left over challah with our local peanut butter. It was heaven.

We had a very fruitful week in lessons. I will be back soon with pictures of main lesson books.

Simple flower silhouettes

Creative Jewish Mom did a nice tutorial on  flower silhouettes. I love these.  They are simple, inexpensive, and beautiful.

Fox fairies, tangrams, and drawing: a summer math lesson

 

It’s been a while since I posted anything on this blog. I promise it’s not an “abandoned blog”. I plan on posting lots of stuff when the new school year picks up in fall.  We have been enjoying a summer of activity. Swim lessons, the library, the state park, picking fruits & vegtables & preserving them, going to the theater, and the beach. We just haven’t done much  that would be worth putting on this blog.

Today we did a fun tangram math lesson. Tangrams are a chinese puzzle game made from a square broken into 7 pieces which can be arranged in endless ways to create pictures.  I thought I would share our lesson which is based on a book by Ann Tompert called “Grandfather Tang’s Story. The book begins with a grandfather & his grandchild taking a walk & resting under a tree. The grandfather pulls a tangram set from his pocket & begins to tell the little girl a story with them. This ties in wonderfully with  waldorf based

Great tutorial: how to make window stars

http://www.duofiberworks.com/journal/2009/1/5/window-star-tutorial.html