I sent home a math activity, Shake 5 and Spill, that you can modify and do at home. Here's a quick look at the kids playing the game in the classroom!
One of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Kindergarten math states that children will be able to compose and decompose shapes. The children used different math materials to compose new, and often times different, shapes. The process of combining shapes to build new shapes also helps children see how a shape can be broken down (decomposed) into other shapes. Take a look at what they discovered! Above: Children used pattern blocks to make squares, rectangles, diamonds, hexagons, and an octagon! Below: Children used attribute blocks to make squares, diamonds, rectangles, and even a trapezoid! We even used MagnaTiles to create 2-D shapes. (MagnaTiles are some of my favorite materials to use to help children understand how 3-D shapes are composed! I highly recommend children having the opportunity to play, explore, and discover with these!) At the end of their work, we also talked about whether or not circles were useful in composing new shapes. The children concluded that they were not helpful because "they're round and they don't have any angles." WOW! Great thinking kids! So many children discovered how to use squares to make bigger squares and rectangles. We'll also talk about how many squares can be used to make these shapes. For example, 'We saw that you can make both a square and a rectangle with 4 squares. Can you make a square and a rectangle with 6 squares? 7 squares? 8 squares? How many squares do you need to make a bigger square?' This is providing hands on experiences for children to begin developing an understanding of the difference between square and rectangles and numbers squared (e.g. 3 squared is 9 and a square made of 9 tiles is 3 tiles x 3 tiles). Did you ever think Kindergarten math could build a foundation for such complex skills?! To teach the children about triangles, I began reading the book, "The Very Greedy Traingle." This is a wonderful book for both its math and literary qualities, and can be shared with children of any age! Then, we looked for triangles on the chart, and more importantly, talked about how we know it's a triangle. (You can see that we counted the sides and angles of each triangle.) Then, the students got a bag of shapes (Tangrams, specifically) and sorted triangles and not-triangles. Finally, the students worked to compose shapes using the triangles. They found that they could build bigger triangles, squares, diamonds, and even a rectangle! |
Inside KDGCheck back every now and then... I'll be adding pictures periodically! Archives
July 2019
Categories |