Math Menu

This week we got to choose from our very first Math Menu! Over the course of the week, we each got to choose 6 different items on our Math Menu during our Math Workshop Time. This week's menu allowed us to make choices that would help us get to know the math manipulatives and tools we have in our classroom! 

Choices included exploring with unifix cubes, pattern blocks, and cuisenaire rods, rolling dice and creating numbers with play doh, playing Cooties, making different sorts with our sorting toys, and playing Counting Fish on our classroom iPads

Later on in the week once we wrapped up our math centers, we got to learn  a few new math games! We will choose one of these games to be sent home in our first Giraffe Mystery Bag for each student to share with their families over the next few weeks :) 

We can't wait to choose from a new Math Menu next week!

Giraffes Giraffes Giraffes!

We've spent a lot of time over the first few days of school learning about our classroom mascot. We learned that a group of giraffes is called a "tower" and they live in the grasslands and woodlands of Africa. We looked at pictures of giraffes and the beautiful sunsets they have in the grasslands, and we recreated these giraffe silhouettes using black crayons and watercolors!

As we learn more facts about giraffes, we will write them on index cards and put them around our "tower"

We also did a directed drawing picture of a giraffe:

After we painted and cut out our giraffes, we created a special background using Adinkra Symbols, which are used in all sorts of African fabrics and pottery. 

We watched clips from this video and chose some of our favorite symbols to add to our background. Our giraffes looked amazing and are now hanging proudly in the hallway:

Finally, at the end of our first week together, we worked as a group to create a unifix cube train as long as a male, female, and baby giraffe!

We learned male giraffes can grow up to 18 feet tall and females grow up to 16 ft. When giraffes are born they are already 6 feet tall! Their tongues are also up to two feet long and are black/purple in color. 

We will continue to learn more about our mascot throughout the next few days and throughout the school year. If anyone finds and fun giraffe facts at home, please share them with us! 

Math Madness

In the last two weeks, we've had lots of fun exploring our math material and diving into our first math unit!

We got to use our awesome new classroom ipads to explore some of our new math apps!

making fun shapes and patterns with geoboards!

We were inspired by our giraffe measuring to see how long of a unifix cube train we could make--this one wrapped around half of our classroom! 

We began our first math unit by exploring number lines and number grids, and after making our own class number line, we played a game of "Number Line Squeeze". Some of us decided to challenge ourselves after a few rounds and we moved on from using a number line to using a number grid! 

Unifix World Record?!

Over the last few weeks, we've been talking a lot about measurements and world-record lengths, especially since we've been learning so much about our very tall friends the sunflowers! At the end of math the other day, we tried to make a record-breaking unifix cube chain that swerved and curved around our classroom. There is not currently a world record for the longest unifix cube chain, but I am guessing over 30 ft. comes pretty close!