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Tag: measurement

Time Capsule – A Family Math Night Activity

Time Capsule – A Family Math Night Activity

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We are living through a historic moment in history that has brought about some major changes to our lives. As an elementary math educator, I wanted to figure out a way for students to capture this moment through a math activity. That’s when I came up with the idea of creating a time capsule.

I presented the activity a few weeks ago as a webinar for a homeschooling consortium but when we lost the video of the presentation, I decided to film it again and am including it for you below.

It’s a simple but fun project that the whole family can do. With a little adaptation, it would work in the virtual classroom, as well.

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Measuring and Estimating with the Summer Olympics 2012

Measuring and Estimating with the Summer Olympics 2012

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Have your kids been watching the summer Olympics? Are they itching to see how far they can jump or throw objects? In honor of the 2012 Summer Olympics, we’re going to give our kids a chance to compete in their own track and field events…and sneak in a little math while we’re at it! For each of the events below, use masking tape to indicate the starting line. Give kids an opportunity to practice each of the events before the…

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The Artistic Side of Math – Tessellations

The Artistic Side of Math – Tessellations

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I love M.C. Escher! I have a whole book on his work and love to share it with my students when we’re studying angle measurement. That’s because we’re going to tie math and art together through modifying polygons similar to how M.C. Escher did it in some of his paintings. It’s all about tessellating shapes and angles. Using pattern blocks, I show students how shapes tessellate. See photo below. Then, I have students determine the angle measurement of each of…

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The Artistic Side of Math – Area

The Artistic Side of Math – Area

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This is one of my favorite math and art activities. That’s because it involves a mathematical pattern. Using centimeter graph paper, we start with the basic unit which, in this case, is simply one square. I then ask students what they think the area would be if we doubled the size of the square. The first thing they blurt out before thinking is “two”. I then use the graph paper to show them that if I double the square (double…

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Measuring our Feet – A Fun First Grade Activity

Measuring our Feet – A Fun First Grade Activity

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Partners traced each other’s feet. Then we used Unifix cubes to determine the area. (Partial squares got a little tricky but we did a little fraction work.) Then table teams grouped their Unifix into tens and ones for some place value practice. The kids LOVED that they got to take off their shoes. (Okay, there was one who wasn’t so keen on it…and there were a lot of laces that needed to be tied before recess!)