Thursday, April 7, 2011

This got their attention!

I felt we needed a bit of decimal review before jumping into the metric system, so...

...I bought one of those really big Hershey bars and we cut it into tenths! (Note: warm it up in the sun for a little while before cutting. Ours was a bit cold so it broke a couple of times when we were dividing it.)

Here is one tenth divided into tenths, which would be...hundredths! We didn't attempt to make thousandths, but then again, who wants a thousandth of a Hershey bar?

We talked about equivalent decimals and fractions before munching our chocolate tenths. Each of us got 3/10, or .3. We saved the remaining 1/10 or .1 for Dad.

Can't remember where I got this little all-purpose spinner, but it's great for practice activities. Once we start multiplying with decimals, I'll change out the back of the spinner and make a multiplying game.

I also made a fraction/decimal matching game (left) and some centimeter and decimeter strips.

We placed the decimeter strips along our meter stick to show that there are 10 decimeters in one meter.

Then we placed 10 centimeter squares in a decimeter.


Then we measured a bunch of stuff! I ordered Math Science: Entomology 101 from CurrClick and we measured moths and butterflies while learning some interesting facts. We also measured random stuff from around our house (the pugs appreciated the attention, but were not very cooperative.)


Pug tails are too curly and too wiggly to measure! Right, Lulu?

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Any Math with CHOCOLATE is AWESOME in my book! LOL

Jessy

Sara said...

Yes, math should always involve chocolate. :)

Stephanie said...

oooh, a spinner that you can change out is a very cool idea! I haven't seen them, but I haven't been watching for one, either. Fun for all sorts of made-up games!

The Adventurer said...

Great idea will keep this in mind when we work on fractions, we are still struggling with Division:(.

Hope you give the frog pond a try we are very excited to be having frogs in the yard. I am hoping they will cure my snail and slug problem :)

Michelle said...

I love all your math ideas :) I'm not a "math person" so games and hands-on activities always appeal to me. Chocolate is a great motivator!

~Leslie said...

This is a GREAT idea!! I'll have to 'tuck it away' for when we arrive at this point in math.

I have a bag full of 'blank' spinners wondering what I'd so with them. Thanks for these ideas! :D

candyn said...

Your education posts always blow me away. That you are able to orchestrate the activities and photograph them at the same time, then follow through with blogging about them is just awe inspiring to me. I'm just not that together.