Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Hamster Smarty Party

What do hamsters do when they need to review division?


Duke it out?


Of course not, kids! These are civilized hamsters. They divide their candy evenly and fairly. So...if 2 hamsters divided 10 Smarties evenly, how many candies did they each get?


Too easy, right? But now there are three hamsters. Can they divide their candy evenly?


Oh, oh. Here comes their friend. He wants candy, too! I think we are going to need more Smarties for this group. Let's just toss an unknown number of Smarties into the pile. Without counting them, how can we figure out how many candies we have?


An array is a great way to see how many we have, Super! And good thinking, Dude: rows of 5 are the easiest to count!


Let's put these situations into number sentences. Remember: we can write division problems two ways. Write your number sentences your favorite way. Then make up some problems of your own.


Now let's do some mixed practice.


Do you notice a pattern here? And how does knowing your multiplication facts help you with division?

Now for a bit of decimal review in our math journals...




A little handwriting practice, another chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a discussion about how the Ancient Greek civilization is still with us today, a quick spelling test, and a playdate with homeschooling buddies.

We had a great day! Hope you did, too!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

LOL Love the hamsters! Cool math journals! (Never thought about having math journals!) Looks like a perfect day!

Jessy
http://oursideofthemtn.blogspot.com

Karen said...

Sparklee, my hat is off to you – you do more in one day than we do in a week!
Those hamsters look pretty excited about all the Smarties… :-)

Sparklee said...

Jessy--I never thought of having math journals either! I got the idea from RightStart, which started using this year. We use them for our warm-ups and challenge problems. I like that they are getting used to taking notes, and it's a good record of what they've learned during the year.

Karen--I may be overloading the kids a bit lately because we took an extra-long winter break! Besides, we frequently scrap our plans and do something a little less "academic," like watching movies or cleaning the garage... :)

Michelle said...

Oh, I love it! We're doing multiplication and division next month, so I think we're going to have kitty math with our leftover candy. :)