Christmas Hands on Math

Here are the Hands on Math activities we got up to this week...

Our hands on Math projects are something the Piwis can  work on together, and learn from even with their 4 year age gap. For more on our this see my first HOM post.

Measuring Metric Mass in Kg

We started our week with measuring mass. This year we are studying metric measurement. The Piwis were excited to play with all the different types of scales we have. Out first project was collecting items, weighing them and grouping them by their mass. The three categories: about less than 1kg, about 1 kg, and more than 1 kg.

Elf Math -measuring in grams

In order to investigate measuring mass in grams we did some 'Elf math'.
I gave the Piwi's a list of weights, the kitchen scales and a huge pile of mini candy canes. Their mission was find out how many candy canes you needed to make 25g, 100g, 150g and 200g. They tried it with little candy canes and the bigger fruit flavored ones.

Even Perry helped.....

I think Mini Piwi misheard me because it seemed like she was trying to eat her weight in candy canes.

I gave Miss K a challenge to use her results to see if she could work out how many candy canes you would need to make 500g, 1kg. Miss K didn't know it but she got an introduction to Multiplication.

Mini Piwi helped Miss with the Elf math and then used the balance to compare the weight of the big and small candy canes. She also measured the table using candy canes.

Next week we are going to solve some more real world problems with Mass like comparing masses.

Super Shapes!

Mini Piwi asked to make pictures like Team Umi Zoomi -why didn't I think of this one!!
We made lots of Christmas pictures from shapes just like Geo. We made some from our plastic tan gram shapes and others from paper. Here is Miss K's tree and Mini Piwi's snowman.

 

 

Test prep

One of our goals for the new year is practicing test taking so I encouraged Miss K to log on each day to IXL. She said she had forgotten that it was so fun and has consistently spent 20-30 mins on it all this week. Mini Piwi has taken to asking to go on Starfall.com when Miss K is on IXL.

 

 

I have a Spectrum test prep book ready to go too. So many homeschooling moms have recommended this to me.



 

 

Talking of multiplication, this weekend we are going to use the Christmas Multiplication freebie from The teacher in Me. Ms. Mills you saved me a lot time with this cute printable, thanks!!

 

 

 

 

 

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Christmas Science Fun

 

What our 2nd grade looks like

 

Hands on Math week 1

 

 

 

Science for Christmas

Language, Math and History became our focus this month with our unit studies. Science, I thought, would need to wait until the new year. Thankfully, I came across a link on Science about Christmas Science Ideas. Pre K Mini Piwi will definitely love these ideas, she is all about ice! For Miss K (Grade 2ish) I went looking for more ideas. Several google searches later I decided we still had time to fit in some science by investigating electricity in order to find out how Christmas lights work. When I taught at a science camp several years ago I just went to radio shack and bought all the components for electrical circuit experiments. This time around I decided to 'cheat' and look for a kit.  I was so excited when I found a Magic school bus electricity kit.

Why is this exciting? Miss K loves the books and the episode re-runs so I purchased the Magic school bus DVD set last week. It was at such a great price I couldn't pass up the chance to add it to our curriculum. We received the kit and have started with the Static electricity experiments. So far I have been impressed with the quality of the information and materials included..

UPDATE:
Thanks so much to all the great posts added to this post! I have a follow up post with pictures from these links....

Setting the Turkeys Free Craft

Last week we picked out 'Setting the Turkey's Free' at the Library. I reviewed it here.

 

Mini Piwi made her very own turkey hand today -She traced all by herself.  Miss K was inspired to make more Turkeys with her. When they bought them to me while I was cooking dinner, I left the pans and grabbed the glitter glue.

Miss K made a setting for her Turkey,

 
Mini Piwi's Turkey was all about the glitter....

Shared with

Miss K makes a Lapbook for Mini Piwi

I am a proud Mama!!

Miss K was asking about the printables I had been downloading for Mini Piwi. She decided to make one. Her reasoning was that she knew what all little kids would be interested in...her Tot pack theme?
Candy.
This is her testing version that Mini Piwi is going to try out...

Miss K has outsourced the publishing of the printable version to me....

We will let you know how Mini Piwi rates it.

Hands on Math: week 1

Thanks to Pinterest I found the Math Coach's corner. Seriously, what did we do before Pinterest?
Ms. Donna is a K-5 instructional Math coach and posts a lot of her great ideas for getting kids to understand and enjoy Math. Inspired I decided to try and do a hands on Math project each day as well as our regular Math lesson. Miss K was not a fan of math last year and while Math in Focus has helped her attitude it could still use some help! I really want to show the Piwis how math is used in the real world.
We only did it on Monday and Tuesday this week because Miss K came down with Bronchitis. Poor thing wasn't up to much for the rest of the week.

The Math projects are part of 'Team Piwi' which is what we are calling the activities the Piwi's can do together.

Monday:

Miss K needed to find a way to fairly sort 12 Jellybeans into three jars. She did this and then explained how she did it mentally by looking at them and seeing 3 groups of 4. We then wrote it down together and I explained it as an introduction to the concept of division.
While I worked with Mini Piwi on her version of this activity, Miss K, completed the fraction component of the lesson to review what we were talking about last week.

Mini Piwi sorted her Jelly beans by color and then we counted them. Sorry for some reason this picture rotates when I upload it!

Tuesday 

Last week we began with Grade 2 Metric measurement in our Math in Focus Curriculum. To practice  Measuring skills we set up an experiment to test how far differently folded paper airplanes would fly. I love doing the measurement units because it Math AND science. It has inspired me to begin working on a Lapbook.
I had thought about doing it outside with water balloons but it was pretty chilly this week and Mini Piwi is still getting over her cold. We found different paper plane folding instructions and made several each.

Throwing the first plane from the starting line

Measuring the distance the plane fly and learning the importance of using the ruler the correct way up

 


 

Woolly Aphid Nature study

This week, I was once again reminded that I should spend more time looking at things through the eyes of an inquisitive child.

Piwi Dad called the kids out to see something on the patio on Sunday. What he had spotted was what looked like a tiny bit of dryer fluff 'walking' along the patio toward the garden. Miss K theorized it was an ant carrying some fuzz. I carefully picked it up and discovered that under the fuzz was definitely not an ant but an odd little grayish white bug with lots of legs. The Piwis were convinced it needed to be looked at closely so it was put into an old huggies wipes container with some leaves.

The new species guess was that it was like an insect version of the Decorator crab Miss K recalled from the Aquarium earlier this year. Off to google we went and a quick search of 'fluffy insects' made us realize that we were harboring the crop destroying Woolly Aphid or Mealy bug. This of course did not deter the Piwis who insisted on bringing it more leaves. I could see the irony...for the years I had heard my green thumbed Grandad talk about how bad aphids were on roses etc and now we were looking after their furry cousins. A quick search of the garden turned up an Orange tree covered in Mealy bugs and other pests...The Landlord has probably got a insect battle on their hands. We, on the other hand, had a mini ecosystem (literally) on our doorstep to spend the day observing.


The eggs on this leaf have yet to be determined. It is not likely a Mealy bug as it is not fluffy 

The observation turned into a Mealy bug research report....and a mini Lapbook

The Front cover of the Lapbook and Mini Piwi's little book she made about ladybugs.

I'm not sure how clear this is, but here Miss K has written some of what she learnt about Mealy Bugs...including 'Farmers and Gardeners think they are pests, I think they are cute and fuzzy. Ladybugs eat them'.

Metric Measuring: Length

When we arrived in the US, the non metric-ness (not the best grammar) really caught me off guard. Teaching inches and pounds last year was a bit hair raising to be honest. The only thing I can relate to in imperial measurement is sewing, hemlines and seam allowance. Thanks to my amazing Nana that's how we learnt to sew. Love you Nana!
Anyway, I was extremely relieved that this year Miss K was onto metric measurement! I am going to have to start tutoring myself on conversions between metric and imperial for next year I suspect.

We started with length this week and made our own meter 'sticks'. You can print them off here.
Printable meter sticks and tape measures. We colored them in while talking about the increments on the 'stick' and them set off to measure things. The task was to find 3 things that were less than a metre, 3 more than a metre, 3 more more than 2 meters and 3 about a meter.

It was a busy time with Piwis running all over the house. Perry the cat did not appreciate being measured, nor categorized.