No, We Haven't Become Extinct!

Ok, so I know it's been a really long time since I posted something (like a month..geesh). We've had A LOT going on. Brother and Sister's Poppa had to have an emergency surgery in the middle of Feb and had some complications from that. He is at home now, thankfully, and on the mend. We've also been getting more involved in our church, which is great. We did some Valentine's Day activities and we've just started our dinosaur unit, which is what I wanted to share today. I have some math activites that we have been doing that are very fun.

Stegasaurus Order

I see great potential with this little stegasaurus! I put magnetic backing on the bony plates so that we can use them on our baking sheets and they won't get frustrated with moving pieces. I'm thinking in the future we'll do even/odd, count the plates by 2's etc.

Dino Ten Frames
I think ten frames are wonderful for determining more or less and quickly determining amounts. We've been counting the tops and the bottoms and making all sorts of different equations. If you want to know more about ten frames you can go here.

Sorting
Of course, we did all sorts of sorts (ha-ok, I know that was bad). We sorted the dino toys by color, type, size, etc.



Dino Patterns

We made different patterns with the colors of the dinos and the types of dinos (stegasaurus, t-rex, stegasaurs, t-rex). We've got AB & ABC patterns down! We're going to try some more complex patterns now.



Measuring Dinos

I love this picture! We measured our dinos using nonstanard measurement (unifix cubes). We measured the heighth and the length of our dinos.




Adding Sets

Since we have a really good grasp of number sense from 1-10, we've been combining sets to make different sums. This picture doesn't really show how we do the set combining, but it does show two addends and the sum. So, here's what we do:

1. We have two different sets. I usually draw two large circles with a plus sign between them and a large line under the circles.

2. The kids put different amounts of dinos in each circle and count each one. Then, we write the numbers below the circles.

3. We scoot all the dinos below the equals line and count them again. Ta-Da! Addition!



Well, that's some DINO math. I'll post literacy, science, and art activities later!