Math Links:Greater Than Game

It's been awhile since I had an actual post for Math Monday.  This week we focused on the letter Gg and I got the idea from letteroftheweek.com to teach some "greater than" math.  The game that follows was my own creation.
This is a really simple game.  I just took a half a sheet of paper and wrote "Greater Than Game" on it with a > under it.  Then I drew some lines to create a little chart called "Greater Than Facts."  In order to play the game the girls each get to roll one die. We then bring the dice into the middle of the table to compare the amount of dots.  We then put the dice on the Greater Than Game paper with the die with the most dots on the  left side of the paper.  Then we say, for example, "5 is greater than 1."   I then wrote the numerals in the chart and the girl who had rolled the larger amount received a "stick."  If the girls rolled equal numbers no one got a stick (I debated with myself whether to give them both a stick or neither. Still not sure if that is the way I like it) and we wrote it at the bottom of the game chart, "6=6"

The girls really seemed to like this game, they have asked to play it two times since.

Some other math we did this week was with the science "experiment" of making goo.  First we needed to measure how much corn starch was in one box.  I measured 1/4 cup at a time, showing them that it took 4 to make a cup.  

We discovered there were 3 cups of corn starch in the box.  Then I had to divide it into 4 parts.  So I drew 3 cups divided into quarters.  I shaded each 3/4 of a cup with a different pattern to show we needed 3/4 of a cup 4 times.

Not sure if they had any clue what I was doing or if it makes sense to anyone else, but it makes sense to me.

Skip Counting Activity

This morning Tabitha was "skip counting."
"One, two, skip a few, ninety nine, one hundred."
Not sure where she learned that.  Anyhow, I took the opportunity to teach her how to count by tens.  First we just counted by rote.  Then I remembered the cute math game on more.starfall.com on place value.  The child places one stick at a time in a bucket and the numeral changes displaying how many sticks are in the bucket.  When the bucket gets too full, which in this case means more than 9, they are gathered together in a group of 10 and a second bucket appears for the tens.  Then the child has the choice of adding a bunch of ten sticks to the ten bucket or one stick to the ones bucket.  It keeps going this way until you get to 100, then there is a hundreds bucket.  It continues on to 1000.

Anyhow, I reminded Tabitha of this game.  Then I searched for the craft picks I have and some yarn.  I had her count out 10 picks.

Then we gathered it into a group of ten.

Then I had her count out 10 more picks.  Then we counted then starting at ten, "10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20."

Then we gathered them together again.  What amazed me about the next step was that when Tabitha was laying out the next set of 10 picks she laid down the first one and said, "one," then she turned to me and said, " that will be twenty one."

Anyhow, we continued counting picks, 10 at a time, until we reached 100.

Then we made a bundle of 100.

A tad proud of herself, don't you think.

I am linking up to 

Tutorial: Matching Halves

I decided I wanted to create an exercise to help the girls understand the concept "half."  I wanted to make a game out of it, or it could just be used as an activity.

I cut a piece of construction paper into a square:

Then I traced it onto a piece of white paper:

Then I cut the square in half:

I attached it to the white paper with double sided tape:

I made several different sizes so the girls could find the matching half:

I am linking to 

School Time Week 22 (Hh concluded, houses and more hearts)

I guess my last school type post was my Valentine's Day post.  We really didn't do much more that week for some reason.  We've had two more muffin tins

Our "Mommy can we have a muffin tin today" tin.  I made it a H/red tin

hot dogs

H shaped ham and cheese

Red veges (beets, grape tomatoes, red peppers

honey mustard

honey wheat pretzels

red ketchup

heart shaped pb&j

Last week was the first week of no themes over at Muffin Tin Monday.  We chose to have a muffin tin for breakfast for the first time.  I mean, we've had a breakfast muffin tin at lunch time before, but this is the first time breakfast at breakfast time was ever served in a tin.  And it was all at the request of Tabitha.

We enjoyed a snow day (while the public schools took off for a snow day).

and made our first snow ice cream:

We also started our H collages, coloring our H pictures last week.  Our H words this week are: house, horse, heart, hat, hippo and hand. The collages didn't get put together until this week though.  

This week we were a little more productive.  We watercolor painted houses.  This was another one of Tabitha's requests.  They really enjoy painting.

Then we talked about our house.  We discussed all the different rooms and the different things we do in each room.  I got this idea from a book we read, In Our House by Anne F. Rockwell.  This is a book I had for the older children. Amazon didn't have a picture of it, neither did my library.  Wish the children hadn't walked off with it.  If I find it I will update with a picture.  Each double page spread of this book shows all the different things that the bear family can do in each room of the house.  Though not everyone obviously lives in a house with say a finished basement, I thought it was a cute book. 

Then we made an H house.  I saw several ideas for H houses over at Ultimate Alphabet Craft Collection at The Attached Mama.  I was looking for one for a lower case h and I really liked the idea at H is for Homer Horse and Hippo.  I like the way she used the arch under the h for the door. 

Here are our supplies:

We glued the h on top of the brown rectangle:

Then glued the triangle on for a roof

Leaving the top of the h for a chimney.  Then the girls traced my dots for windows.

They colored the windows in with a yellow crayon to represent a lighted house.  Then added stars and a moon because it is a house at night. Oh, and we added a doorknob.

This week I tried something new with our words of the week.  Usually we will use our word cards and match the word to the picture.  

This week I decided to write the words on our little chalk board easel.  I wrote the words one at a time as the girls watched.  When the word was done they needed to tell me what the word was and bring me the picture. After we had done every word, Tabitha wanted a turn writing the words.  I caught some of it on video.  

If I can get it to upload you will get a chance to see it. Otherwise, so sorry for the tease, but I want to get my post posted.

and some of it in pictures.

Then I tried something else new, inspired while I watched the girls erasing words with the wet paper towel.

I wrote one letter at a time:

And had the girls trace/erase it

helping them learn how to make the letter.  Granted Tabitha really doesn't need the help as she knows how to write her letters.  I think this will really help Amelia though.

We also talked about half this week.  I made an activity called Matching Halves.

I showed the girls these squares that were half filled:

And they had to find the correctly sized rectangle half to make a whole square.

Then I brought out the rectangle cards and put them in a circle. Each girl got to find them all on their own.

The girls were calling them "elevators." They were closing the elevators.

Then we made these cute heart shape animals that I found over at Touch of Home Learning.  I will have a separate post for this coming up shortly with a review.

A couple of other books we've been reading these last few weeks are:

Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss

Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss

Harold's Circus by Crockett Johnson

Daddy really enjoyed reading the Horton Hatches The Egg book to the girls.  I do love Horton's sense of responsibility and faithfulness while he sits on the bird's egg waiting for it to hatch while the lazy mother bird disappears after tricking him into doing so.  I love this quote that is repeated throughout the book:

"I meant what I said and I said what I meant...

An elephant's faithful One hundred per cent!"

I really do like the Harold and the Purple Crayon books too.  I love seeing the pictures form in Harold's imaginative mind.  In this story Harold draws himself a tightrope and ends up falling onto an elephants trunk.  The elephant is only part of the circus world he creates.

I took out Old Hat, New Hat by Stan and Jan Berenstain, but we never got to it or the hat project we were going to paint.

One other thing I did was draw a couple of pictures on the chalkboard. I had Tabitha write the words herself, sounding them out.

Then Amelia wanted to write.  Her H's are pretty good.

(No, really, it is a hat)

I'm linking up to