Every other week, we do a math activity called "Counting Collections." I know you've seen these little 1/2 pages coming home in folders, so I wanted to explain a little more about it. Counting Collections helps to build number sense, place value ability, addition skills, etc, etc, etc. Essentially, the students work with a partner to count a collection of like objects. Our collections started with 30-50 objects, but by the end of the school year, we will build to collections of 150+. After students have their collections, they try to use the most efficient counting strategy they know of, organize their thinking with a partner, and record their thoughts to share with the class. We have a share-out time after, for students to model different strategies for their classmates. We started the school year, with the majority of the class just sorting their objects...moving them around..counting a few pieces...and getting the wrong totals. We have already moved to using all kinds of strategies. Some students are counting by 1's, some are grouping by 5's, some group by 10's, some use 2's, and so on. I am so proud of my sweet, little firsties!! I wanted to show you a tiny sample of their work. You could practice this at home, by letting them count a group of like objects (bag of cereal, box of dried pasta, box of safety pins, etc) and asking them to move the objects into like groups to count or add together. Easy practice, and they love it! In the words of Paxton, "Alriiiight, Mrs. Girdler! We're doing collections in Math today! I LOVE these things!" Cue..proud teacher moment... :)
Counting foam triangles...
Counting aquarium stones...
Counting rocks...
Counting marbles...
Counting by 5's and 10's on their collections:
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