Week of October 22-26, 2018
Room 8 had a busy week focusing on beginning mathematical concepts such as sorting, categorizing, greater than or less than, and more. We introduced these beginning topics in an activity using M&M candy. First, we asked the children, “How many M&M’s do you think are in this large 1-pound bag of candy?” The children looked perplexed and shouted out some random numbers like 1000, 8, 70, and 60. We explained that coming up with their best guess for the amount of M&M’s in the bag is called “estimation”. The concept of estimating is defined as making an approximation from the data given to us. Whether we are looking at a jar full of pennies in a math class, glancing at a room full of people, or quickly adding up the cost of items at the grocery store, estimating is used in our everyday experiences and a critical thinking skill that is essential to the development of problem solving. Since estimation is a very challenging concept for young children, therefore, we wanted to expose the kids to this task at an early age to set them up for success later in their education. While we did not stay on this for long, we will continue the concept of estimation in the next few weeks to slowly reinforce the importance of making a guess within a reasonable range of numbers. Next, we had all of the children work together in a large group to sort the candies by color. We determined that there are 6 colors in the bag including brown, yellow, red, blue, orange, green. After sorting by color, the children were broken up into groups of 2 and were instructed to sort their individual color into groups of 10. We noticed that this was a difficult concept for most groups at first. We demonstrated how to create a group of 10 M&M’s and continue making groups of 10 until you run out of the candy. For example, Blake and Amanda created 13 groups of 10 out of the blue M&M’s and had 6 single candies leftover. Luca and Jordan counted the red candies and made 7 groups of 10 M&M’s each with 4 singles leftover. Then, as a class, we counted by tens to figure out the total number of coated candies by color. As your child which color had the most or which color had the least. In order to explain the concept of mathematical terms like most, least, greater and less than, we used the scale to weigh the colored groups of M&M’s. Before weighing them, Brayden and 9 other friends thought that the green M&M’s were the greatest, while Jordan, Cameron, Sasha and Kate proclaimed that the blue group had the most M&M’s. We placed the green candies on one side of the scale and the blue on the other, and the scale tipped slightly to the blue side! We asked the children since the blue is heavier, what does this mean for the number? Scarlett quickly raised her hand and explained that there is more blue because it is heavier. Since we had already counted, we knew that the blue had 133 M&M’s and the green had 132 M&M’s. Which is greater? Grayson told the class that 133 is bigger by only 1 number. While the difference was very slight, we concluded that the package had the most of the blue M&M’s. The concepts of “more than,” “less than,” and “equal to” are the key basics to learning addition and subtraction. Comparing and contrasting numbers and quantities is a higher level of thinking essential to development of children. We were absolutely blown away by the participation for the homework assignment this week. In light of the sorting and categorizing theme going for our class this week, the children quickly sorted the vegetables into categories by name of the veggie. Thank you so much for helping your children bring in, write down or evoke the idea of these very creative vegetables including mushrooms, onion, bell pepper, kale, pumpkin and more. After sorting by vegetable name, the children counted and realized that they brought in a total of 22 different types of vegetables! Ask your child what other kinds of veggies they saw and ask which they got to try. We hope everyone has a great weekend! Shabbat Shalom, Mari + Aaliyah Reminders:
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