Christina's Kinder Blossoms: Working with Mathematical Practices and More

1)Recently I had a short training on Standards for Mathematical Practice. So this week I thought we would work on some math story problems and see how many of these mathematical practices we could incorporate into this activity. Students listened to the story problem and were asked to solve the problem using pictures or number sentences. Then I asked some students to come up to the ELMO and explain their answers in front of the class.

Here is a short video of a student's response.

I think we really accomplished K.MP.1 and 4, but I could have extended this activity by asking other students to explain why they agreed with or disagreed with this child's response and incorporated K.MP.3.

Oh well, it's not a bad start for an old dog trying to learn new tricks!

Then we tried this problem which involved using various pattern blocks to make the triangles. The problem was that they had to be made in 6 different ways

The students persevered in this and soon discovered that some pattern blocks were not helpful in solving this problem. They also discovered which ones were helpful. They requested more of the helpful blocks! (K.MP5)

2) We read Mrs. Wishy Washy and created these responses for what she would say after she discovers the animals have jumped back in the mud and gotten dirty.

The Mrs. Wishy Washy Template is from Making Learning Fun printed on colored construction paper. We did not use the hair from the template because it was the wrong color (after being printed on colored construction paper.) I used yarn for the hair. I cut out my own dialogue bubble. Find the template here: Mrs. Wishy Washy

3) We also discovered while students were working on their computer activity that they were having trouble finding missing numbers!! GASP! Then we realized that we did not do much with this because we had no resources available. GASP!!

Naturally, I had to create some worksheets for the purpose of review!!!

I am sharing these with you. The missing numbers 1-10 is on Teachers Notebook. Click the image to download your freebie.