Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Joy School - Numbers

In November our Joy School theme changed from Seasons to Learning Basics. Our first day was our Numbers unit. It was a great day and we had a lot of fun.

Lesson: Our lesson covered what numbers are and why they are so important. Phone numbers, addresses, road signs, cooking, etc. Then we did a few activities to reinforce proper counting.


The mom who put this lesson together had made a paper ice cream cone for each child, and had made numbered scoops of ice cream on different colors of paper. The kids had to get all the numbers for their cones, and put them into order.


Then she had taken paper plates and numbered them from 1-20 and hidden them all around the living room. The kids then searched until they were all found and we put them in increasing order.

Our last counting activity was this one she put together with muffin tins. I loved this one! Each child was given a muffin tin and a small bowl of beans, and they had to count out the right number of beans for each spot on the tin. How fun!

My boy really had fun with this one, and was done it right away, but then he emptied it out and did it again. I plan on doing this again with him at home just for fun, and I think it would be a hit if we did it with mini m&ms or something.


Science Time: The kids were given three brown paper bags that were stapled shut so that they couldn't see what was inside. Then by lifting them up, they had to make predictions about how many items were in each bag; one, two or three.


Then when they thought they had the answer, they put the #1, #2, and #3 by their guesses. When we opened the bags, we found out if they had the right guess, or had gotten mixed up. This activity went really well, and the kids came up with the right answers.

Then they were given three different bags and had to guess again. But this time, the things in the bags were different. And we learned that you can't always tell where the most is just by the weight - we need to know the number of items. (Reinforcing that numbers are important). In this case, the bag with three was the lightest bag because it was three marshmallows, and the heaviest bag was the one with just one item, a potato.

Snack Time: We made number patterns from cubes of cheese, chocolate chips, and Cheerios. For example, two chocolate chips, one Cheerio, two cubes of cheese. We gave it to the children with two repeats, and then had them carry on the pattern one more time through and then they got to eat it.

Craft Time: Lacing cards in the shape of numbers.


Art Time: We had two art projects at this day. We did basic connect the dots where the numbers went up to 20, and we also did a colour by numbers page.
Story Time:

We read two books by Eric Carle. Ten Little Rubber Ducks, and a cute book about animals on a train called, "1,2,3, to the Zoo." Great illustrations.
Singing Time:


We took cushions off the couch and sang Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed. Such fun! Look at how hard they are jumping!

Then we sang Hickory Dickory Dock, and used this fun visual.

Wiggle Time:

The kids drew a number and would match the number to this chart, and then we would do that action that many number of times. For example, if you drew an eight, you'd have to hop on one foot eight times. If you got a six, you'd have to spin six times.
I wish we would have had more time to play with this game, but it was time to head off to get our older kids from kindergarten and we had to wrap it up.

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