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Mmmmm,
chocolate! What a great way to begin some math lessons at the
beginning of the school year. I started out with m&m’s Color
Pattern Book and m&m’s Counting Book by Barbara
Barbieri McGrath. After listening to these books the children
each received a baggie full of m&m’s. I reread the pattern book
and the children tried to make and extend the patterns in the
book. We quickly discovered that the giant bag of m&m’s I had
bought didn’t have many browns, so we had to make a few
adjustments. We also worked on skip counting by twos. The next
day the children started a Kidspiration2 activity. I made m&m’s
and the children had to skip count by fives, add the numbers,
and do it in a color pattern as well.
Our next
book was More m&m Math. After this book the children
received another baggie of m&m’s and we did estimating, sorting,
graphing and addition.
The final
book I used was Hershey Kisses Addition Book by Jerry
Pallotta. Our first estimation jar was filled with Kisses. So
before starting the book we estimated how many Kisses were in
the jar. Then, we used place value boards to count and find out
the jar held 80. The next day I read the book and the children
worked in pairs to work on double facts and then come up with
all the math facts for 10. Once they had their lists complete I
make a chart for the room. The next day the children put their
candies on a workspace and we worked on ordinal numbers.
Finally, getting to eat the third Kiss and the seventh Kiss was
a favorite part. The following day, the children went to the
computer and went into Kidspiration2. I had an activity ready to
reinforce ordinal numbers-the children had to color in specific
Hershey Kisses. (One of my students drew the Kiss for me.)
We all
enjoyed the chocolate activities while reinforcing and
strengthening our math skills. |
