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Category: Mathematics -The Elementary Years

What Do You Notice? Number Theory

What Do You Notice? Number Theory

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Skills:
K-2: counting, skip counting, patterns, even/odd numbers
3-5: even/odd numbers, patterns, multiples, factors, multiplication, common multiples, prime/composite numbers

When students learn to skip count* they are reciting the multiples of the number they started with. It’s a great early introduction to multiplication. This poster is a horizontal representation of some of the multiples for numbers 1 – 23 which are represented by different colors. For example, multiples of 1 are magenta; multiples of 2 are yellow; 3 are green, etc.

Factors are the numbers multiplied together to arrive at another number. For example, 2 and 3 are the factors that, when multiplied, result in the product 6. This poster shows the factors of each number vertically. The factors of 6 are: 1 (magenta), 2 (yellow), 3, (green), and 6 (blue).

1 x 6 = 6 and 2 x 3 = 6

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What Do You Notice? Gumballs

What Do You Notice? Gumballs

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So this was a super fun What Do You Notice? poster I created for my last Family Math Night event. Not only is it colorful, but who doesn’t like gumball machines?!

Skills:
K-2: counting, even numbers, skip counting by twos, comparison
3-5: probability, fractions, money

This is a fun one simply because of the fun gumballs and gumball machine. That said, there is still a lot of math going on. Young students can count the number of different colored gumballs. They can compare colored gumballs to see which color has the least and which color has the most. They can even count all the gumballs to arrive at a total.

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Family Math Night Project Series: Bug Box

Family Math Night Project Series: Bug Box

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I’m very excited to share with you our newest Family Math Night product line designed around hands-on projects in math. We’re calling it our Project Series and the first one, just released, is Project: Bug Box.

Hands-on and super fun, this Family Math Night Bug Box station will get the creative juices flowing! Participants choose one of their favorite (plastic!) bugs and use 2- and 3-dimensional geometry along with number skills to create a rectangular prism. Participants will walk away with a custom designed box for their bug which they get to bring home and share with others.

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Power Packs and Math Homework

Power Packs and Math Homework

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Everyone loves to play games. They’re engaging, motivating, and fun. And from an educational perspective, they can be a powerful learning tool. Here’s what games can do:

  • reinforce skills learned in the classroom
  • develop mental math skills
  • encourage strategic thinking
  • foster mathematical communication
  • build confidence
  • engage parents

But one of the best things about games is that they offer meaningful practice in a way where kids actually want to do math. That’s because games, by their very nature, are fun. It’s not too hard to entice a child to play a game. And because of that, games offer important practice in a way that worksheets can’t.

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What Do You Notice? poster – Crossed Lines

What Do You Notice? poster – Crossed Lines

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Skills:
K-2: colors, counting, even/odd numbers
3-5: multiplication, even/odd numbers, multiples of 3, square numbers

Crossed lines is an easy strategy for learning multiplication facts. The horizontal and vertical lines represent the factors in the multiplication problem. For example, in the problem 4 x 3, students would draw 4 horizontal lines and then intersect them with 3 vertical lines as is shown in the last example above. The intersection of the lines is the answer to the problem. So for 4 x 3, there would be 12 intersections.

To make the strategy more visible, I used colored dots to highlight the intersections. I was deliberate in the colors I chose. The green dots represent an even product and the pink dots represent an odd product. Notice how all the products are multiples of 3. At a higher level, older students may notice that 3 x 3 makes a square and 9 is a square number.

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