"Soup-er Bowl" Week

As part of our week-long Super bowl Math unit, we also had a "Soup-er Bowl", where we challenged our school to help us collect 100 yards of soups and other non-perishable food for the Preble Street Resource Center. 4th graders measured all the food, and we are happy to report that we exceeded our goal, collecting 113 yards of food. Below are pictures of the 4th graders with the truck that came to pick up the food.

Awesome job, everyone!

Measurement Games

We have started a measurement and geometry unit in math.    

Last week, students got to spend two days rotating through 10 different measurement stations. Here's a peek at some of them...

There was a map on the SmartBoard of the various measurement stations.

After estimating how far she could throw a cotton ball, Shaunna measures to see.

At the cup capacity station, you had to estimate how many teaspoons or Tablespoons would fit into a cup. We realized that it was important to fill each spoon all the way, or we got different results.

  

At the Bean Balance station, you had to predict how many cubes it would take to lift 1/4 cup of beans. We realized that we had different ideas about how high to fill the measuring cup, so our answers had a big range.

Ansly and Kasandra figure out the perimeter and area of the desktop in paper clips.

After estimating, Brenden and Peyton measure how far they could throw a straw. They then converted from feet to inches.

At the "Pick Your Perimeter" station, partners made 3 different rectangles,  trying to make the one with the largest perimeter, using 24 tiles. Students found out that the largest rectangle was 24 x 1, so it had a perimeter of 50. The smallest rectangle was 6 x 4, with a perimeter of 20. All of the rectangles had an area of 24.

Students got very different results at the "Bowl O' Cubes" station, where they first estimated how many cubes could fit in the bowl, and then tried it out. We realized that some students had better luck heaping cubes in the bowl without any falling, so that accounted for the differences.

So...what did we learn?

Along with getting a chance to practice estimating skills, and use of measurement tools, we learned how important it is to be clear and precise when you are measuring. You also need to be sure that everyone follows the same procedures, or you will get very different results!

Winter Candy Scenes

Check out our slideshow of our winter candy scenes. We had a blast making them! Thank-you to Tyler, Brenden, Michael, and Molly's moms for helping out, as well as Griffin's dad, and Lauren's aunt and sister. Thanks also to everyone for sending in the supplies. The kids made some amazingly creative scenes!

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Math Calendar Part 2

This recording shows another part of our math calendar routine. Here, we take whatever day of school it is...in this instance, it was the 57th day, and figure out whether that number is prime, composite, and/or square. We do that by finding all the factors of that number, and along the way, learn the divisibility rules for various numbers. (The video may take awhile to load.)

Math Calendar

I am a huge believer in math calendar! Through this daily routine, I can reinforce so many math concepts and vocabulary. I used to do calendar on a big white board, until last spring when I got my wonderful SmartBoard! Over the summer, I created calendar pages using the Smart Notebook software. Here is a peek at one of them that we recorded using Smart Recorder. The class helper does all of the writing with input from the rest of the class, (although when you watch the video, it seems like the writing appears by magic!)


This page is called "Big Number". We always read and write the calendar date as a big number to practice place value. Students are getting really good at reading and identifying the place value of numbers into the ten millions! Look for more recordings about other parts of calendar in the coming days.