Supplies:

• Crayola Markers, 3 for each student
• One Organic Chocolate Bar for each student
• Piece of Paper

Have everyone bring in a Whole Chocolate Bar (organic if possible – it is healthier!)  -  One that has an equal number of squares in it.  They do not all have to be the same number of squares, but if they are, it is a bit easier for instructions.

Using a non-toxic marker (Crayola is my favorite), have each Learner draw a gridline across the paper on the outside of the bar in their favorite color. http://www.crayola.com/products/list.cfm?categories=MARKERS,BASICS

Step 1:  Counting 1-12 (usually,  this is the number of squares in a bar.)  If it is different, then  ask the learner to count, respectively re their bar, and write down on paper the basic 12 fractions of their bar:

1/12, 2/12, 3/12, 4/12, 5/12, 6/12, 7/12, 8/12, 9/12, 10/12, 11/12, 12/12

Step 2: Then secretly and individually, each student colors a different amount of squares in each bar, using 3 different colored markers.  Encourage Sharing/Trading markers if there is not enough markers to go around.

Step 3: Then, everyone divides into pairs, and one at a time – without  showing each other what they have colored – each student  guesses what 3 numbered fractions the other one has colored.

Eg/  Susan colored 3 squares in Red, 2 squares in Yellow, and 7 squares in Purple.  Therefore, Susan’s Secret Fraction Codes are:

3/12, 2/12 and 7/12.

Bob colored 3 squares in Blue, 6 squares in Green, and 3 Squares in Orange. Therefore, Bob’s Secret Fraction Codes are:

3/12, 6/12 and 3/12.

Step 4:  After successfully guessing the other’s Secret Fractions, each one guesses the 3 respective Colors – of each Fraction Code.

Step 5: Once they have successfully guessed the other one’s Secret Fraction Codes, have them, TOGETHER then, add all 3 to make the Whole Number One 1.

Eg/ Susan’s Secret Fraction Codes look like this:

3/12 + 2/12 + 7/12 = 12/12 = 1

Bob’s Secret Fraction Codes look like this:

3/12 + 6/12 + 3/12 = 12/12 = 1

Last Step:  Everyone share their Chocolate Bars with The Teacher! lolololololol

Enjoy!  Yum.

Love The Earth!

Remember to Recycle both the paper and the tinfoil or plastic that the bar was wrapped in!  The more Recycling and Care for The Earth, the more Pretty Colored Feathers (or Stars)you receive from The Teacher!

http://iloveloveearth.weebly.com/enter-the-i-love-earth-competition.html

For another one of our fun and affordable Fraction Games, you can visit here: http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/chocolate.html

Making the task of teaching elementary math a little easier on the shoulders of the teachers, here is a checklist of goals for the year, to check off through the year, and give yourself a pat on the back for all of your teaching efforts and successes.  Given all that teachers do in the run of a teaching day, month, term and year, saying thank you is the least any of us can do.

At the year’s end, you can ask yourself if your Learners are Able to:

• Feel good about themselves whether they have the answers correctly or incorrectly divide by multiples of 10, 100, and 1000
• Understand and make basic home economic money-wise decisions such as buying groceries
• Grasp fractions, whole numbers, proportions, and percentiles
• Make a graph, understand a graph
• Use deductive reasoning – such as assessing shapes and figures in geometry and how they relate to each other
• Add, subtract, and multiply fractions

Adding, subtracting, and multiplying fractions all connect with a broader goal of understanding parts or part and whole of all life ideas and circumstances. The mind develops conceptual ratios, proportions, and percentiles, as we walk through a market or a neighborhood.  These become the building blocks of learning algebra and calculus in the later years – conceptual models developing in the mind of building a bridge, for example.

Books and curriculum are tools to achieve these goals for teaching and learning in the elementary classroom, but the process of achieving or attempting to achieve the goals is the real success for both the learners and the Teachers.

For some fun, using games to teach and learn math, here are a few ideas:

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/index.html.

Here is a Fun Idea for making it a Happy Heart Math day applicable to Grades 1-4 that encourage comprehension skills of:

Assessing, making predictions, and organizing

Counting, creating, adding, comparing

Listing/ recording data, and reading a graph

This activity is about making heart graphs, inspiring practice and comprehension for making graphs in general, and using fun hearts specifically.

Materials:

Bag of Multi-colored Candy Hearts, about 5/6 cups (1 cup worth for each 5 students)

Large Clear Glass or Plastic Vase / Jar

Plastic / Styrofoam Reusable Cups (1 for every 5 students)

Pencils and Pencil Crayons (matching colors to the Valentine Candy Hearts)

Graph Paper (2 pieces for each group of 5 students)

Prediction Graph

End Result Graph

Heart-Shaped Name Tags

Paper for recording data (1 piece for each group)

Glue Stick

Tape

1.  Divide Learners into groups, 4/5 in each group

2.  Each group guesses / predicts what color of Valentine hearts will be the highest number in the Vase of Hearts

3.  Learners of the whole class tape their Heart Name Tag on the Guess / Prediction

4.  Graph via their corresponding Valentine Color

5.  Each Group of Learners organize by color, a cup full of the candy hearts

6.  On paper, each Group of Learners records data by counting the hearts by color, and writing down the corresponding number of each color that was in their cup

7.  One color at a time, with colored pencils, one Learner from each group puts results of color numbers on the graph.

8.  Learners records all results on Results graph, one at a time, until all have had a chance to graph

Possible Questions to Ask and Share answers:

What color did you like the most?

When all results are added together, how many of each color are counted?

Who was closest to the true answer for numbers of each color? (Comparing Guess / Prediction Graph to End Result Graph)

Which colors were the highest to the lowest, in descending order?

Winners’ Prize:

Eat your favorite color Hearts!  Remember to Share if you and some others have the same favorite color.

And for One of our Fun Learning Math Games:

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/FractionsBoard4.html.

Modern governments want to develop financial literacy among consumers in society. This means improving the ability to understand money matters, applying that knowledge and developing responsibility for making money decisions at the grade school level.  Money literacy is an important life skill. Although it has minimally been taught in school in courses such as Home Economics, things are changing in this area in attempt to make our children good money decision makers before they come into their adult years.

Kids need genuine and sound guidance from people who know what they are talking about.  Parents, schools and other initiatives are important in ensuring a society wide grasp of financial affairs.  Making this information accessible to all students, seems so important where it is existent in so many affairs of life around the entire globe.  So much about schooling has been geared toward finding a good job when a learner graduates from school, but they first need mature ideas of how to understand and manage money.

In our One and My Equals Card Deck, 3 Fun Games are included:

1. Go Figure! (like Go Fish)

2. Pie! (like Concentration)

3. Matrix!

To view and try out these fun money card games about the Whole Number One ($1) and all its equivalents – fractions, decimals, percentages and money,  click here:

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/OneEquals.html

This site is also a valuable resource for kids that includes lessons about money, and game lessons on financial literacy and how to use money in their neighborhood:

http://www.kids.gov/k_5/k_5_money.shtml

• Teach them to use the ruler. Rulers are really handy for teaching real-world applications for fractions.  Most of them are already divided into halves, fourths, eighths, even sixteenths.  It’s easy to show them that two halves are the same as one. . . that two fourths are the same as one half, and four fourths are the same as one, and so on.
• Teach them to use measuring cups and spoons.  Bring lots of these dishes to class and give one measuring spoon and cup to each child.  Ask them to pour one cup of water into a tall glass. Now take guesses from the students:  How many half cups do they think it takes to fill a cup? How many quarter cups will it take?  How many one-eighth cups and one-third cups will it take?  Do the same with spoons:  How many half spoons does it take for one teaspoon, and so on?
• You can build on the measuring cups and measuring spoons lesson by giving each student a copy of a recipe or two.  Ask the students to help you rewrite the recipe.  For instance, you could take a recipe that serves four people and tell the kids that you only want to serve half that number (or two).  Then ask how many of each item you’ll need if you take half of each.
• Finally, you can use travel as a way of teaching fractions.  This one is more of a homework assignment.  Ask the children to count how many cars they pass on the way home from the school.  They write down this number.  Then ask them to write down how many are blue; how many red; how many white; how many yellow.  Finally, see if they can turn this into a fraction, reminding them that the color is the top number and the total number of cars is the bottom number.

These suggestions are not only fun ways to keep your students interested in fractions, but more importantly, they are ways to show them that fractions are applicable in real life.

For some of our fun games on fractions, you can visit these pages:

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/FractionsCards.html

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/cards.html

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/chocolate.html

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/FractionsBoard4.html

1. First, remember that the right time to start teaching fractions is right after the children have a good understanding of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.  Then begin with very basic, simple fractions for each operation.

1. We suggest using colored pencils for fractions, with one color consistently used for the top number, or numerator, and a different one for the bottom one, or denominator.  To train your class to recognize the numerator or denominator by your designated color, write some fractions on the board, and have the kids come up and change either the numerator or denominator to the right color.

1. Ask each child to fold in half a piece of paper. Then fold this folded sheet of paper in half again. Use the squares to talk about the blank___ to mean one out of four and the blank___ to mean one out of two.  Have them color to show first one fourth, and then one half, and then…

1. Gradually, you’ll begin working toward teaching the kids how each of the four operations is done with fractions.  For instance, with addition and subtraction, you add or subtract the top number but leave the bottom number the same.  With multiplication, you multiply the two top numbers and then the two bottom numbers.  Then with division, you flip upside down the second fraction and multiply.

1. One of the best ways to help elementary age students remember fraction concepts is to teach it in terms of money, so either keep lots of change and dollar bills on hand, or perhaps cut out some fake coins and bills.  You’ll find that many kids have an almost immediate recognition of how much a “half” dollar is.  Also, as soon as you tell them that a “quarter” is another word for a “fourth,” it will be easy for them to grasp that in terms of money, a quarter is one-fourth of a dollar.

With these few simple tips, not only will fractions not be a chore to learn, but also you’ll find that most children actually enjoy the lessons!

For a refresher game on adding, subtracting, and low integer multiplication and division, we have Hex-a-Race!:

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/HexaRace.html

After the refresher, we have for equivalent fractions these ones:

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/cards.html

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/FractionsBoard5.html

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/FractionsCards.html

1) Working smarter to keep their attention.  Elementary kids cannot focus on a long, drawn-out lecture for 45 minutes.  Generally, they need to change up what they’re doing every 10 to 15 minutes.  So if you have a 50 minute class, be prepared to change up what they’re doing about four or five times. This keeps it fresh and flowing!

2) We have to fill the child’s day with interactive activities. Kids won’t recite multiplication tables for 50 minutes, or memorize 50 states without some sort of fun game to do it through. Instead, we have them talk and share. Including activities like puzzles, games and role playing shows, has them learning by doing.

3) We practice patience.  In most cases, young children genuinely want to learn.  Katy doesn’t keep missing those subtraction questions to irritate us.  She just doesn’t understand it, so rather than be fooled by upset, we exercise patience, find the root of the problem, and help her to overcome it.

4) We show that we value the student.  This actually applies to any age level, but with elementary students, it’s critically important.  We’re teaching these kids at a time when they’re developing their self-esteem. When we show them that they’re important by asking them to help us with chores like “leading the line” to lunch or by cleaning the erasers or by complimenting them in class, these things tell the student that they are important and needed in the classroom.

5) We involve them in team-building activities. Team-building activities are healthy for all students, but is essential for elementary kids.  Without team-building activities, the child tends to be very selfish.  Involving him or her early in working as a team takes the child’s focus off him/herself as a lone individual and places it with others as a group.  Games, puppet shows, and role playing in small groups are examples of ways to teach children to cooperate with others.

Our latest Math Activity Game is called Hex-A-Race.  It is a very fun floor (or table) game designed for Grades 4-6, and is a very interactive activity with teams, focusing on adding and subtracting mostly, with multiplication and division using small numbers:

http://math-lessons.ca/activities/HexaRace.html

When emphasis is placed on grading, children become more concerned with achieving the grade than on the journey in achieving the grade, sometimes associating their “goodness” then, with the grade. An achiever-style A/B student can show achievement and success, though more often than not, it can be detrimental to the student’s self-esteem.  The child’s struggle and focus can become a goal for the teacher’s acceptance, literally surpassing the learning aspect altogether.

Pedagogue, Alfie Kohn calls this “chasing the carrot” or “avoiding the stick” in his text What Does it Mean to be Well Educated? (2004).  Kohn suggests that rewarding students for a certain grade can be as damaging as punishing for not having done so.  Both methods skip over the central core of a student – the natural joy and thirst for learning.  This natural thirst and joy for learning is present in children, so obviously in the early years.  Though once introduced to the system of grading, the child can subconsciously develop strategizing – a subtle form of innocent manipulation to work at receiving that age-old important authority / parental / teacher’s acceptance.

Focusing on the importance of grades can breed memorizer students – those who practice memory techniques to give back to a teacher what the student thinks the teacher wants, rather than the optimal learner students.  Even though memorizing can be an effective study tool, memorizing is not likely the quality learning result that a teacher truly wants for the student.

Where grading may be an important part of the educational system, it is only effective if minimal importance of it is placed upon the psyche of the child.  Introducing games in the curriculum of a child’s schooling reminds the child that learning is by its very own nature, supposed to be fun.  Designing curriculum that regularly incorporates left-brain/right-brain activities such as spatial functioning card games, both encourages the child to desire learning again (what was once a natural thing), and while literally developing new healthy dendrites in the child’s growing brain.

For an example on Teaching Through Inspiration, here are some of our Fun Math Learning Games:

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/Geometry.html

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/OneEquals.html

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/equiv-fractions-bingo.htm

Did you know that most people in general tend to do better with any activity when they are competing against someone else? One great way to accomplish this is to incorporate a technique through a fun and stimulating school activity.  The way that this game works is that each student is given different times-tables problems.

Each problem is given a certain point amount. For each correctly solved problem that the student has correct, they are assigned the amount of points associated with that problem.  For example, 1×1=1, they would be given 1 point; 2X2=4, and so on. If the student answers the problem incorrectly, they do not gain any points.  As a matter of fact, they lose the amount of points that correspond to the problem they answered incorrectly. This technique gets the children even more interested in learning multiplication tables as well as answering the problems correctly. It will also get them motivated to correctly answer the equations, especially those with the higher numbers so they can accumulate more points.

At the end of the assignment each student’s score is added up and the person with the most correct problems, as well as the most points is designated as the winner. If there is more then one winner, then you can do a sudden death match and have each player compete against each other until there is a winner. Or you can reward both of them with the title of “Multiplication Masters” and they can be the designated team leaders when you play this game another time.

You can also add even more fun to this game by breaking the class up into teams and assigning 5 players to each team. This allows the students a chance to interact with each other and learn the value of teamwork, plus for those students that are struggling they will be able to work with other students that can help them out.

By incorporating this fun game into your teaching plan, learning multiplication tables will be a lot more fun for kids, plus they will benefit from working with other students. They will also learn a valuable lesson that integrates the concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Steps:

1. Take a sheet of fractions that you may have on hand that are just plain old fraction problems.
2. Let’s say that the first fraction of the first problem on the sheet is ¼
3. Let’s use that good ol’ imagination of yours and let’s write out that problem so the kids will enjoy reading the problem and learn something important at the same time.  Therefore, you would write something to this extent:

Tommy has four toy trucks. Of these four toy trucks, one is green. How many trucks does Tommy have that are green? Write this in a fraction. Answer- ¼

1. Now for the same problem, but the second number, let’s say it’s also ¼

You would write:

Jerry has four cookies.  Of those four cookies, one is chocolate chip. Write this in fraction form. Answer- ¼

1. Now you instruct them on the paper to take the first two you wrote out and have them make a fraction problem, therefore it would be ¼+¼ =

You can do this with as many problems as you would like. It would also be great to work in some topics that kids are interested in like snacks or candy or something fun.

By incorporating this technique, the students might be able to catch on a little better. They will also be able to grasp the beginning concepts of logic and probability, which they will need to be able to understand later in school.

….And of course, our other Fun Fractions Game for decimals, percentiles and money:

http://www.math-lessons.ca/activities/OneEquals.html