Winter Party

Yet another double blog post day. We ended our day with a winter party led by Ms. Malissa and a group of parent volunteers. We made a craft and had some treats. A good time was had by all. Thank you to all who came and helped out. Below is the link to a photo album that includes photos of the crew opening their gifts from Cate and I and some photos that Ms. Jen took at our party. Enjoy!

Winter Party Photo Album

Pacific Ocean Market

Wow! What a great day! We saw and experienced so much today. I will let the photos and your child speak for themselves. Thanks to all of the chaperones for coming along and helping us out. The link to our new photo album is below. Chaperones, please feel free to add your photos to the album.

Pacific Ocean Market Photo Album

Show Choir Performance

Our Show Choir Performance was today in Performing Arts. Our crew did a fantastic job! See? All of my mushy emails are spot on - this crew is amazing! Mr. Josh gets such great performances out of the students at our school. We are so lucky to have him! Thanks to all of you for coming! We will work on sharing the video in another form - not here on the blog. Below are my photos - blurry and all. Feel free to add any photos you want to share to this album, too.

Show Choir Photo Album

Math Games to Play at Home

Reminder: Library Tomorrow!

Below are a few math games that your family could play at home. We have played some of them at school and some of them are new. The materials you will need are things that are probably floating around your house - dice, playing cards, coins, counters (legos, beans, buttons, coins, etc.).


Race to $1.00
 You need: a partner, collection of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and a dollar bill, two dice.

Players take turns rolling the dice and taking that many pennies. On their turn, players may exchange 5 pennies for a nickel, 10 pennies for a dime, 2 nickels for a dime, etc.

Play continues until one player has collected enough coins to exchange them for a dollar bill. To make the game easier, use only one die or choose a smaller amount (50 cents) as the winning amount. 

As you play ask your child: How much money do you have now? Who has more money? How much more?

Sums of Ten

Players: 1

What You Need:

• Deck of playing cards (with the face cards removed)

What You Do:

1. Place cards face up on a flat surface in a 4 x 4 array. Place the rest of the deck to the side.
2. Scan the board for cards that add up to 10. Remove these cards, or card combinations, and place them in a discard pile.
3. If there are no cards or combinations that add up to ten, refill the array with additional cards and see if there are any combinations of ten now.
4. Keep adding cards until you can find a combination that adds up to ten.
5. Remove cards until you can't find any more combinations.

Before and After

What you need: number cards

1.            Shuffle cards together

2.            Deal 6 cards to each player.

3.            Put 2 cards number side up, put rest of cards down in pile.

4.            Take turns putting a number that comes just before or just after one of the face up numbers.

        Play as many as you can.

5.            Take number of cards you played from the facedown pile.

6.            If you can’t play then take 2 cards from the facedown pile.

The player who is out of cards or the player with the fewest cards when there are no more plays wins. 

Addition Top-It

The game is played with a deck of number cards, 4 cards for each number 0-9. (This can be a regular deck of cards with the face cards removed.) As many as four children can play, but at first, children should play the two-player game.

1. Shuffle the deck and place it on the desk with the cards face down.

2. At each turn, players turn over two cards, add the numbers together and call out the sum. Players should check each other's sums.

3. The player with the higher sum takes all the cards. In case of a tie, players turn over two more cards and call out the sum. The player with the higher sum takes all the cards from both plays.

4. Play continues until there are fewer than 4 cards left in the deck. The player who took more cards wins.

Subtraction Top-It

This game is played just like Addition Top-It except that instead of adding their cards together they subtract their two numbers. The player with the largest difference keeps the cards.

Domino Top It 

What you need: dominoes

1.            Place the dominoes facedown.

2.            Each player chooses a domino and compares the total number of dots to the total number on his/her partner’s domino.

3.            The player with the larger total takes both dominoes.  Ties are settled by another draw.

The game ends when time is up or when all dominoes have been drawn.

Tric Trac

Another fun game to practice basic addition facts is Tric Trac. Below are the directions and a picture of the game board. You can easily make your own game board just by writing the numbers out on a piece of paper.

Tric Trac

Materials Needed: 2 dice, 20 pennies, and a hand drawn game mat for each player

1. Cover the empty circles with pennies.

2. Take turns. When it is your turn:

• Roll the dice. Find the total number of dots. This is your sum.
• Move 1 or your pennies and cover your sum.
• OR move 2 or more of your pennies and cover any numbers that can be added together to equal your sum.

3. Play continues until no more numbers can be covered on your gameboard. Your partner may continue playing even after you are finished.

4. The game is over when neither player can cover any more of the numbers on his or her gameboard.

5. Find the sum of your uncovered numbers. The player with the lower sum wins.

Directions and game board can be found here.

Tric Trac is also available as an app. You can find it here.

3, 2, 1 Game

Materials: 1 sheet of paper, 1 pencil for each player

Players: 2

Object of the game: To reach exactly 0

Directions:

1. Write 21 at the top of the sheet of paper.

2. Players take turns. When it is your turn, subtract 1, 2, or 3 from the last number written on the paper.

3. The first player who subtracts and gets 0 as the answer wins the game.

 

Difference Game 

What you need: number cards

40 pennies    

1.            In the center of play: 40 pennies (Bank)

2.            Players each take 1 card from open of the deck and then take the same number of pennies from the bank.

3.            Find out how many more pennies one player has than the other. You may pair as many pennies as you can.

4.            The player with more pennies gets to keep the EXTRA pennies. The rest go back into the bank.

5.            Game ends when there are not enough pennies in the bank to play another round.

6.            Winner: player with the most pennies

How Many Are Hiding

In this class activity, students find the missing number to complete a number sentence while also seeing different representations made by other students.

Material

• 10 or more snap cubes /objects per player
•  A cup for each player

Task Instruction

• In this activity each child has the same number of cubes and a cup.
• They take turns hiding some of their cubes in the cup and showing the leftovers.
• Other children work out the answer to the question “How many are hiding,” and say the full number combination.

Example: I have 10 cubes and I decide to hide 4 in my cup. My group can see that I only have 6 cubes.  Students should be able to say that I’m hiding 4 cubes and that 6 and 4 make 10.

Learning Basic Math Facts

We have been focusing on learning basic addition and subtraction facts. Some of us are just beginning to learn them while others of us are much more comfortable with them. This is such an important skill to practice at this age. Familiarity with the basic addition and subtraction facts will make such a difference in your child's math career. I know I have mentioned this before but I have taught grades 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 (including Algebra 1). I can tell you that those students who had a solid foundation with their basic facts were so much more ready to tackle new math concepts and to use those basic facts to solve more complicated problems.  Now is the time to practice those facts with your child for a few minutes each day. We have begun to learn new games - both online and offline that will help us practice our basic facts. You can also help by asking your child to solve a fact as you are driving in the car and then ask them how they solved it or you can play various games both online and off to practice (rules for one game you can play are below). You can use whatever method you and your child enjoy. It's just important to work at it a little bit each day and to keep it fun and interesting.

Having said all of that, I do want to emphasize that what I feel is most important for students to learn in math is how and why things (like addition) work the way that they do. I want to develop their mathematical thinking and problem solving skills. If I had to choose between memorizing basic facts and developing mathematical thinking, I would absolutely choose mathematical thinking. Thankfully we don't have to make this choice. I will, however, always focus more on mathematical thinking in class and spend smaller amounts of time learning the basic facts. In our every day lives, we have so many tools at our disposal that can help with basic facts but we don't have tools that can do the deeper thinking and understanding for us so that is where my focus be.

Double Compare

The game is played with a deck of number cards, 4 cards for each number 0-9. (This can be a regular deck of cards with the face cards removed.) As many as four children can play, but at first, children should play the two-player game.

1. Shuffle the deck and place it on the desk with the cards face down.

2. At each turn, players turn over two cards and call out the sum. Players should check each other's sums.

3. The player with the higher sum takes all the cards. In case of a tie, players turn over two more cards and call out the sum. The player with the higher sum takes all the cards from both plays.

4. Play continues until there are fewer than 4 cards left in the deck. The player who took more cards wins.

Information for Parents
Learn math without fear, Stanford expert says 

You can find more math resources for parents on the Parent Resources page of our crew blog.

Fun apps,websites and board games to help practice basic math facts:

Apps:
Addimals
Subtractimals
Hungry Fish
Mathtopia

Websites:
Resources page on our crew blog has links to several good websites for addition and subtraction practice

Board Games:
Tiny Polka Dots - many games can be played with this deck of cards - only one is shown at this link - I bought this game for my nephew for Christmas and we all enjoyed playing the games
Prime Climb - This game can be modified as your child grows up. You can start with addition and subtraction at first and add multiplication and division later. I bought this game for my niece and again, we all enjoyed playing this game. It is good for kids and adults. My 5 year old nephew played with us, too, with just a few adjustments to the rules for him.
Mobi - The Numerical Tile Game in a Whale Pouch
Shut the Box 

Mr. John, the Firefighter

Today was a double blog post day! Right after lunch, Mr. John, Avery S's dad, came to talk to us about fire safety and being a firefighter. We learned all about the gear that a firefighter has to wear and carry. I got to try on the gear, too. It was really, really heavy! Mr. John says that all the gear together weighs about 70 pounds. Ask your child to tell you all about it.

Firefighting Photo Album

 

Bedtime Math

A great website/app for you to use at home with your child is Bedtime Math. This site tells a short story each day and then follows it up with three levels of math problems for wee ones, little kids and big kids that you work on offline. The idea is to read the story as a bedtime story and then complete the math problems that go along with the story - a great way to do a little reading and a little math each day. It is not an app that kids just play on their own. Click on the picture to visit the site.

I read an article about Bedtime Math on NPR and thought I would share it with you. It explains some research that shows how doing the Bedtime Math stories really helps kids. The link is below:

Where The Wild Fractions Are: The Power of a Bedtime (Math) Story

Important Dates
12/20 Fieldwork to Pacific Ocean Market
12/20 Winter Party 2:45 pm
12/23 Winter Break Begins
1/6 No School ~ Teacher Work Day
1/7 First Day Back at School After Winter Break
1/20 No School ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
2/13 Winter Voyage for First Grade
2/14 No School ~ Professional Development for Teachers
2/17 No School ~ Presidents' Day
3/16-3/30 Spring Break

Branches Series of Books

Scholastic has another series of books for young readers called the Branches series. It is just right for late first grade readers and second grade readers - which includes most of our crew at this point of the year because we are readers! If you are looking for appealing books for your child, be sure to check out books from this series. Our crew loves these books - truly! You can see all of the series and details about each one at the link below. I have included a few photos of the books below to give you an idea of what you will see at the link.

Branches Series

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Singing in Mandarin

We have been learning a song in Mandarin Chinese. It is one we all know in English - Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. Today Mr. G's crew came over and we taught it to them.

Please imagine cute, photos and videos of this below. I forgot to actually take any photos or videos. Sorry.

Acorn Series of Books

Scholastic has a new series of books for beginning readers called the Acorn series. It is just right for mid to late first grade readers. If you are looking for appealing books that your child can read, be sure to check out books from this series. Our crew really enjoys these books. You can see all of the series, video book trailers and book samples at the link below. I have included a few photos of the books below to give you an idea of what you will see at the link.

Acorn Series

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coding with Ms. Kim's Crew

This week is the Hour of Code week. We have been using coding websites and apps in our crew for a while now but we are returning to it this week so that we can join students all around the country who are doing an hour of coding. This morning we went to Ms. Kim's room to learn about their coding projects. We were so impressed!