Back to School Fun

We've been doing lots of fun stuff since school has started back and I'd like to share a few of those fun things with you! First, Math can be a pain for some kids. I like to spice it up and play lots of games and do lots of hands on stuff. I think I mentioned a few weeks ago about the marshmellow place value idea, but are some pictures of that activity.

Another fun Math activity is the game Finish First. Partners share a game board where each side has 12 spaces (1-12). Each partner should have game pieces to cover up their numbers and one set of dice for the game. Partners take turns rolling the dice. They can either add, subtract, multiply, or divide to get an answer to cover up. The first time we did this, we just used addition and subtraction. The object is to cover up every number on your game board. If you rolled a  5 and a 4, you could add for a sum of 9, or you could subtract for a different of 1. They can only cover up one number though. The strategy here is to realize which numbers are harder to cover up (1's, 2's, 11, 12) since there aren't as many ways to make those numbers with the dice. The kids love this game! Here are some fun photos from the game!

We've also been doing lots of fun science experiments! One of my favorites is Boat Afloat. I allow each student to make a boat out of tin foil. I tell them that the object is for their boat to hold the most number of pennies without sinking. They had so much fun building and testing their boats! And of course, we recorded all of our data in our Science Notebooks! Here are some of our boats!

I believe the rectangle boat held the most pennies.

The kids had a great time constructing their boats and testing them! I had a lot of fun watching them! I'll post more later!