First Grade, Math, Set Four

Games, activities, books, and web sites that enhanced our learning:

• Measurement Mania by Lynette Long
• We made a measuring tape (activity #5)
• We made a measuring cup using just a can of soda (activity #19)
• We discovered that most "cups" hold more than one cup (activity #20)
• We tried to find things that weighed one ounce (activity #28)

• We measured different water temperatures (activity #34)
• The first day we worked with Comparing Numbers, K. and I secretly wrote down a number, then we showed the number and K. put out the correct wolf, and read the math sentence. The second day I used Uno Cards. I just took the top four cards and laid out two 2-digit numbers.

•  For Even and Odd Numbers we started a chart.
• Odds and Evens by Thomas C. O'Brien -- this book has some activities and concepts to explore
• The first day we used paper clips to determine if a number could be separated into two groups with the same number of paper clips. We did numbers 1 through 20.
• The second day, she noticed the pattern. We started with 20 paper clips. I asked how many paper clips I needed to add to make the next even number. We did this through the number 30. Then we talked about the pattern and I wrote random numbers in their proper places on the chart. K. colored them appropriately.
• The third day, I put out 2- or 3-digit numbers using Uno Cards (I just picked them up in the order they were in the stack) and K. held up signs that said "Odd" or "Even".

• I introduced addition problems up to 9 + 9 this week. For a couple days we worked on grouping concepts. For instance if you take 15 counters (beans, paper clips, etc.) you can group them in different ways (9 + 6; 8 + 7) but you still have a total of 15.
• We played a game with Uno cards. I made a spinner with the numbers 10 through 18 on it. I divided all the numbered Uno cards between us. Flick the spinner (it lands on 15) you have 1 minute to make as many sets as you can that equal 15, such as 5+5+5, 9+6, 4+5+3+3, etc. We had fun playing it. At this point K. copied my sets a lot, but she did come up with some of her own.
• We played Addition War with the Uno cards. Shuffle the numbered cards, then each of us took two cards and added them together. The person with the highest sum got the cards. If the sums were the same, we each drew two more cards and the person with the highest sum got all eight cards.
• Other games we played to help learn our new addition facts (and review the old ones). Math Checkers, Double It, and Fast Track (all from Games for Math).
• We played Fraction War (Wacky Word Problems by Lynette Long, Activity #15). The activity in the book was for percentages, but we aren't learning that yet, so I changed it to be fractions. We used Uno cards, so all her categories didn't work, so I changed those.
• For Multiplication Readiness and Repeated Addition we played:
• Star Count (Games for Math  pg 113)
• Victor Vampire's Birthday (Games for Math pg 117) -- only I changed it to Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, and Tigger. Piglet wanted to bring 4 haycorns for each animal; Pooh wanted to bring 5 glasses of honey punch for each; Rabbit had 16 carrots - how many does each animal get?; Tigger brought 1 bottle of strengthing syrup for each animal.
• Lots of Boxes (Games for Math pg 123)
• Shoebox Math (Wacky Word Problems #28)