We were doing math on the driveway this morning, playing estimation games. I told each kid to grab a handful of Cheerios and then estimate how many they had. Sarah grabbed the biggest handful she could, made no attempt to estimate, and said, "Can I eat them?" I should know by now not to use edible manipulatives with her. I told her she could eat them if her estimation was within 10 of the actual amount. She tried very hard and got close enough to receive the reward.
Then I had them each take a handful of toothpicks and estimate how many it would take to make a line that reached a certain point on the driveway. After that, I got out the phonics tiles. They are little squares (about half the length of a toothpick) with various letter combinations on them. I asked the kids to estimate how many they would have to line up to reach the same point on the driveway. Noah studied them for a long time and then compared their length to the toothpicks and made a very intelligent estimate based on that information. It's such fun to watch their brains working!
We ended up seeing how many phonics tiles we could stack up before they collapsed in a heap. It was 64, in case anyone wonders. We probably could have gone higher if the wind wasn't blowing. We're going to try it again in the house to see.
No comments:
Post a Comment