Andy Acid Arrives!

The students continued their individual work in the TOPS Math and Math Rules programs. They got really hung up on a problem that involved money.  We spent quite a bit of time discussing coin values and equal exchanges.  I know first graders have had very little math instruction on money, however they usually have some background experience that helps them to pick up related concepts quickly.  After my lengthy, yet fabulous lesson, which included concrete manipulatives, modeling, practice and instructional support, (yes, those are most of the key teacher terms that are supposed to convince you that I know what I am doing) I was asking the students which denomination of coin or bill was greater and one of your darling children said, "a dime and a ten dollar bill are equal (in value.)"  Ugh!  Obviously my lesson wasn't so fabulous!  (LOL) We will continue to look for opportunities to practice working with money.  I want to encourage you to please do the same.  --Nothing huge or stressful, I just want them to begin to learn the value of coins and combinations with an equal value (two nickels=a dime, ten dimes=one dollar etc.)

Next, we completed a creative thinking exercise to work on our flexible thinking, originality and elaboration skills. The students were each given a paper with a partial design repeated four times. (The design is below.) Each repeat of the design was rotated a quarter turn to create a different perspective and new picture possibilities.  They had to use the existing design components and integrate them into their new picture.  Each design had to be used to make a very different picture. I challenged them to see if they could come up with something no one else in their class created and to be as elaborative as possible.  These drawing exercises strengthen the skills (fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration) that will help the children in their problem solving.

This afternoon, we met our second "Quirkle" of the year - Andy Acid!

The Quirkle's series, written by Missouri authors, is a science exploration and phonetic program. When we have Quirkle time, we will first read a story featuring one of the 26 (each letter of the alphabet) Quirkle characters and follow up with a hands-on experiment or demonstration. Each book is full of words that begin with the letter sound of the character, has rich vocabulary words, and focuses on a science topic that we may or may not be familiar with. Some of the concepts are pretty complex, but exposure to the topic is our goal! Today, Andy Acid helped us learn about acids and bases and we found out what happens when we eat too much acidic food. We made a magic formula to test for acids and bases. Ask your child to tell you about our demonstration and show you their Andy Acid science log.

Have a great week!