If I have a candy, and you have two candies...

"If I have a candy, and you have two candies, and I give mine to you, how many do you have?"

I still remember being taught addition this way (always mildly disappointed that no candy ever actually appeared...)

Our math work this week has been a lot about these types of problems - how do we build numbers?We did a lot of math work this week, hands on, thinking hard, and talking with eachother to explain our thinking.

In Shake and Spill, students explored the idea that numbers can be made up of other numbers - the foundational concept of addition. They were given an assigned number, and two sided/coloured beans. From there, they could discover that 2 yellow and 3 red equaled five beans, but also that 4 yellow and 1 red equaled five, and five red and no yellow, and so on...

Students also explored this concept on a ten-frame (we used five and ten frames a lot to cement our memory of what these helpful numbers looked like). One partner would flip over some beans to the opposite colour and the other person had to figure out the math sentence (in this case, 6+4=10).

We also explored five and ten as we tried estimating! Students in partners were asked to scoop as close to five or ten as they could from either a bucket of little things or a bucket of bigger things. We discovered it is easier to estimate big things! Our partner would check our work by placing our scooped items onto a five or ten frame and saying if we had way less, way more, just a bit more or less, or just right! We are also building math description and vocabulary here.

And as a fun challenge, I put up the image in red marker and just asked students about it... "I Wonder what you see..." From there, we identified numbers, some that I hadn't seen initially, and realized that five was the only numeral we couldn't find unless we added two lines. The mathematical thinking coming from the students as they discussed which parts of numbers worked together and tried to think of other ways to see it (sideways? upsidedown?) was rich. We also looked at what other classes in Kindergartens in Ontario had discovered about this picture to see if that would add to our discussion!

In other non-math news, we really enjoyed learning about Elijah and Elisha this week - students were so engaged and asked for more and more, even at the expense of lunch! The picture on the right is of three leaders of their learning - Students asked if I had anything new for a Bible centre for those stories, but I didn't, so I asked if they could make one... they brainstormed, set out the playdough, and set to work making Bible story scenes!

We did big beautiful books outside to see what God has made, and once again enjoyed exploring outside in the sun!