Introduction to Fractions week 4

We are going to continue to study Fractions in Morning Math throughout April (while we do a Personal Narratives block in our Main Lesson time).

The Introduction to Fractions needs to be done very slowly and carefully to ensure there aren't enduring misunderstandings that show up later on!

Themes Covered in Week 1

Mon - K/W/L Chart

Tue - 1/2, 1/4, 1/8

Wed - Making Thirds & Halving Thirds

Thu - Fractions of a Group, Equivalent Fractions (Houses on a Street)

Themes Covered in Week 2

Mon - Fractions of a Number

Tue - Puddle Question

Wed - Reading a Ruler, Simplifying Fractions

Thu - Build-an-Animal

Themes Covered in Week 3

Mon - Restaurant Simulation

Tue - Coins as Fractions & Decimals

Wed - Operations with Fractions

Thu - Converting Improper Fractions to Mixed Numbers

Here are some Notes & Photos from week 4:

Mon - Converting Mixed Numbers to Improper Fractions

Fractions Group 1 -
Fractions of Shapes (quick review), Around the Room practice



Fractions Group 2 -
Mixed Numbers (quick review), show how to write them as Improper Fractions, Converting Mixed Numbers to Improper Fractions practice

Tue - Elapsed Time

read The King, the Dragon, and the Witch by Jerome Corsi

review reading an analog clock and look at a clock as a fraction
(half hour, quarter hour, 3/4 hour past = 1/4 hour till) and note that one minute is 1/60 of an hour and five minutes is 1/12 of an hour



do Elapsed Time practice or finish up yesterday's work as needed

Wed - Making Arrays

add new observations and new questions about fractions to the MLB

lay the foundation for tomorrow's lesson with Around the Room x, ÷

Thu - Using Arrays to Simplify Fractions

read Six Dots: A Story of Young Louis Braille by Jen Bryant

have students review fractions by doing Fraction of a Group and Colorful Fraction Circles independently



use small stickers (check your office supply stash!) to create an array



revisit arrays using the example on my poster:



explain that 8 dots out of 32 dots is the same as saying 1 row out of 4 rows... and, mathematically, we would write this as 8/32 = 1/4

is there a way to figure out equivalent fractions without having to make a visual each time? yes!

show students how you can multiply or divide your fraction using a "special form of 1" (ie. a fraction which has the same numerator and denominator) to get a new -- and equivalent -- fraction!



have students make arrays of their own using tiny stickers and then write equivalent fractions



show them how to "double check it mathematically"
4/12 is the same as 1/3
because 4 divided by 4 is 1, and 12 divided by 4 is 3

I got the idea of the sticker arrays from this TpT lesson using Emoji Arrays. It is SUCH an easy way for children to create their own arrays. Plus, once you have actually made them yourself, you start to see arrays everywhere!

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The Immune System week 3

Today was a great Science Club session! We meet for two hours each week; here is what we did for the third week of the Immune System:

read from Bill Nye the Science Guy's Great Big Book of Tiny Germs

We're Outnumbered!, pp.4-5

do Metric Stair activity
from gigameter to nanometer; "Grey Mat for Metric Measurement" handouts plus the Nienhuis Montessori place value colored pencils

dark green, dark blue, and red for whole numbers

light green, light blue, and pink for decimal fractions

this activity is a wonderful introduction to negative exponents!




Bacteria: They're Old and Tough, p.8 and p.10

do balloon / vanilla extract experiment






Viruses: The Enemy That Gets Within, pp.12-14

do balloon / skewer experiment






Germs Get Around!, p.17

look at doubling cube from Backgammon game






What's in a Vaccination?, pp.34-35

lay out nomenclature for Immune System from ETC Montessori

read from Daring Cell Defenders by Rebecca L. Johnson

chap 3: First Responder Cells

look at three-part cards: white blood cell, neutrophil, macrophage

look at Macrophage plush



make a slime recipe using white school glue, baking soda, and contact lens solution and use it to surround and engulf glass gems



Slime Recipe (PDF)






chap 4: Hunting Down the Enemy

look at three-part cards: helper T-cell, killer T-cell

look at Killer T-Cell plush






chap 5: Armed with Antibodies

look at Antibody plush






chap 6: Cells with Long Memories

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Introduction to Fractions week 3

Work with Fractions continued! (Here are notes from week 1 and week 2.)

Mon - Restaurant Simulation

do Restaurant Simulation (FREE on TpT)
we used pretend bills but real restaurant menus and real coins

Tue - Coins as Fractions & Decimals

play Race to a Dollar / Race to a Hundred Dollars
FREE download from Aimee Salazar's blog post (scroll to bottom)

again we used the pretend bills, real coins, and my 10-sided dice

add Coins as Fractions & Decimals to MLB



bonus question #1: how would we add a dollar coin to this chart?
bonus question #2: how would we add a half cent to this chart?

Wed - Operations with Fractions

introduce operations with fractions: +/- (with same denominators) and x/÷ (a fraction by a whole number) using Nienhuis Montessori Fraction Activity Set 1 and the Cut-Out Labeled Fraction Circles

Thu - Converting Improper Fractions to Mixed Numbers

Fractions Group 1 -
Penguin Trek (review fractions of a group) and Create Your Own Fraction Problems (adding fractions with common denominators)

Fractions Group 2 -
do Crack the Code! (multiplying fractions by a whole number, simplifying "top heavy" improper fractions to mixed numbers)

note: all three of these activities are FREE on TpT




write about what we did today in the MLB along with new wonderings

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Philosophy week 3

The discussions about Reality continued! Previous posts in this series:

part 1 - "The Velveteen Rabbit"

part 2 - The Big Muddy Monster

This week we considered the new spider species, Taczanowski waska.

I began by reading a section of Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature's Undead by Rebecca L. Johnson.

Side note: This is a sensational book! Here are all the species included

Chapter 1: A Fungus Among Us

Zombie Maker: Fungus, Entomophthora muscae
Zombie Victim: Housefly, Musca domestica
North America and Europe

Zombie Maker: Fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis
Zombie Victim: Carpenter Ant, Camponotus leonardi
Southeast Asia


Chapter 2: The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out

Zombie Maker: Hairworm, Paragordius tricuspidatus
Zombie Victim: Cricket, Nemobius sylvestris
Europe

Zombie Maker: Guinea Worm, Dracunculus medinensis
Zombie Victim: Human, Homo sapiens
Africa


Chapter 3: Can We Eat the Babyitter?

Zombie Maker: Jewel Wasp, Ampulex compressa
Zombie Victim: Cockroach, Periplaneta americana
tropical parts of Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands

Zombie Maker: Parasitoid Wasp, Glyptapanteles
Zombie Victim: Moth Caterpillar, Thyrinteina leucocerae
North and South America


Chapter 4: Going Viral

Zombie Maker: Rabies Virus
Zombie Victim: Mammals
Every country except Australia and New Zealand


Chapter 5: Try Me, You'll Like Me

Zombie Maker: Roundworm, Myrmeconema neotropicum
Zombie Victim: Giant Gliding Ant, Cephalotes atratus
rain forests of Central and South America

Zombie Maker: Protozoan, Toxoplasma gondii
Zombie Victim: Rats and other warm-blooded animals
Everywhere cats are found

For this lesson, I read them the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis chapter (victim: carpenter ants). Then we reviewed Kings Play Chess On Fine Grains of Sand, also known as Linnaean classification.

It is easiest to explain this using our own species Homo sapiens!

Kingdom: Animals

Phylum: Vertebrates

Class: Mammals

To further explain Order: Primates
we like to play Primate Bingo



To further explain Family: Hominids
we like to play the Hunters and Gatherers Simulation Game



Genus: Homo

Species: sapiens

After that quick review, I read them a New York Times article from Mar 20:

'The Last of Us’ on Eight Legs (guest link)

Now, on to the Philosophy discussion:

Did Taczanowski waska exist before it was discovered?

AAR - Yes, it was alive before it was discovered, that one. If it wasn't, it would have to be just made. It was there before that second he found it.

FR - Yes. Things like that need lots of time to evolve. And that seems like it's been doing it for a while, playing dead. So yes I think it did.

Z - You can't. You can't prove it.

AAR - Unless there's footprints or something. But it's not heavy enough to make footprints.

CB - I don't think that it was real. You can't prove that it's there before it's been spotted or made. How do you know if it's there if no one ever saw it before he spotted it?

EF - Yes, it existed. It has to be made before someone finds it. Because if it's made after, well, if someone finds eggs, that's one way that you could. But if something already hatches and you find that, it has to be made before.

If we are sure that something exists because we have the evidence, was it real before we had the evidence?

CB - You can't, there's no way to prove that it's real if you don't have evidence before you found it.

Z - Yes, but, if you have evidence now and you didn't have evidence before, is it not real before?

FR is making the argument that that evolution takes time. How do we know that the rules of evolution are the same for this species?

CB - We don't have the evidence of that. We don't have a report of when it was actually here before they found it, and figured it out. We don't know when it came to Earth.

FR - Evolution takes time. Look at the simple things; those still took thousand of years to evolve. If they took years and years to evolve, what about this spider? It's a lot more difficult. Plus it's mimicking an organism that's been infected. That takes time to build a disguise like that for wildlife. It can't just be around for like 20 days or something. It had to be around for at least a few decades at least.

AAR - It can't just pop into nature. So many other creatures took so long to evolve. So this creature must have taken a long time to evolve too. It can't just go in just like that. It needs time to evolve those tentacles. It can't just see an organism dying and be like, oh that's a good idea and then tentacles pop out. It can't just do that.

Z - How would this species know that this fungus exists? It wouldn't know how to mimic it, if it didn't know that that fungus existed and what it looked like and what it did to the other spiders. (That's not evidence to me. I'm just arguing that.)

Here's the Wikipedia page for this new spider. From that page, "Arachnologist Nadine Dupérré subsequently located another specimen, collected in Bolivia in 1903, in the holdings of a museum in Germany."

So our evidence for its existence goes back to 1903. Did it exist before then? Can you explain in what way it existed before it was discovered?

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Using Up Felt Scraps

For 20 years I have been buying pure wool felt from Waldorf-y places, first Magic Cabin and now A Child's Dream. Pure wool felt is absolutely gorgeous to work with... and quite expensive (currently $3.65 per 8 x 12 inch sheet).

In short, we don't waste pure wool felt!

I recently found Trixi Symonds (https://sewasoftie.com) and absolutely love her patterns for little felt creatures. They are so sweet and simple to sew, and the perfect stash-busting project! She calls her little creations Zenkis.

Millicent Monster was our first Zenki. It was an adorable Halloween craft.

And then we made Spirit Owls!

Trixi just released a new pattern book for 10 charming Australian animals and it's on sale right now at Etsy as a digital download. These little animals are all the rage in the classroom! Here's a peek at Zac's Handwork basket:

"Poppy Possum" in progress

The Australia animal patterns are kangaroo, wombat, koala, possum, magpie, platypus, crocodile, pobblebonk (Eastern Banjo Frog), emu, and fly.

This weekend I also purchased Trixi's book, The Zenki Way: A Guide to Designing & Enjoying Your Own Creative Softies, which will give me ideas on how to help the children create their own Zenki-style patterns.

Trixi has a mailing list, in case you want to keep up with new books in her pattern series. I admit I'm very tempted by the Kandinsky-inspired Zenkis and will probably add it to my Art History resources another year. That project will be an ideal use for tiny scraps as well! We never throw away any piece of pure wool felt, no matter how tiny it is or how strangely-shaped.

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!