A Whole Lotta Math Goin' On!

Wow!  We have been busy, but we have been having so much fun, 

I don't think the kids realize that we have learning lots too!

First of all, I have a couple of great books to share with you.

My new favorite book is

Developing Number Sense Grades 3-6!

 I don't know about your kiddos, but mine coming into 4th grade
really struggle with number sense.
This book is awesome!  Last week I introduced a game called
Get to 1000.

Each pair of students get 1 die.
Players take turns rolling the die.
On each roll, each player decides separately whether he or she
wants to multiply the number by 1, 10, or 100.
Each player records the resulting product on a piece of paper.
Players continue to roll, multiply, and record their products until they each have  ten products on their paper.  (Each player will have rolled 5 times.) Each player finds the sum of his or her products. The one whose final score is closer to 1000, whether over or under, is the winner. The best part of this book though is that there is a writing piece to each activity. Here are some pics of my kiddos and their write-ups...

We played this game several times last week and they are getting better at it.

Last week we also did an activity that I found at The Teaching Thief.

First we brainstormed what they knew already about 

multiplication and created this anchor chart.

Then we made these multiplication concept posters.   Just like Amanda said, stickers and food did the trick!

Here are a few of their masterpieces...

Today I taught them a new game, 

Oh, no!  99!

They loved that they got to use playing cards!

For this activity you need a deck of playing cards for each pair.

I got mine at Dollar Tree, 2 decks for a dollar!

It goes like this...

Aces:  add 1

Jacks:  subtract 10

Queens:  wild cards that can represent any other card in the deck

Kings:  add zero

All others (2-10):  add their face value

One player shuffles the cards and deals 4 cards to each player.

The rest of the cards become the draw pile.

Players take turns playing one card at a time, adding or subtracting 

the value of their card to or from their jointly accumulating score.

Each time a player plays a card, he or she must replace it 

with the top card on the draw pile.

Play continues until one player forces his partner to go over the score of 99.

I modeled it for them with me being one player and the rest of them playing against me.

For that game we got to see all of the cards, 

but when they played with their partners, 

they kept their cards hidden.

They LOVED it! 

(Warning - it did get kind of loud!)

Here is what they revealed about their strategies...

Whew!  That's a whole lotta learnin'!

What have you been up to?