School at the creek

The teacher's guide in my math curriculum said to explain to my students how much a liter is, as compared to a quart.  I thought that sounded pretty boring, so I got  a bunch of various-sized containers out of the recycling bin, and a 4-quart measuring cup from the kitchen and told the kids we were having math at the creek.  Usually they groan about math, but they whooped and hollered and hurried out to the creek.  Sarah said, "What if the flash cards get wet?"  I told her it wasn't that kind of math.

I gave them a brief lecture about the different measurements and then turned them loose to play with the containers.

A water bottle cap got away from Noah, so he took off to retrieve it.  Jason is such an amazing watchcat.  He always runs along the side of the creek to keep track of Noah.

Unstructured, hands-on learning is my favorite, because they learn way more by discovering it for themselves, and because math leads seamlessly into science.  He filled up the bottle with different amounts of liquid to see if it would float or sink.

When we found a frog, science class got even more interesting.  Froggy ended up getting dissected (after dying of natural causes).