Creative Writing

We are finishing up a long focus on Math and heading into March's Botany (Farming & Gardening). I'd like to transition in with two weeks on Composition. I'm thinking of having the children write little creative stories that take place in the garden. Now, of course, I need to start brainstorming the stories I will read to serve as examples.

Suggestions?

Factoring and Prime Numbers

Looking for Art & Math connections?

You Can Count on Monstersby Richard Evan Schwartz

Here's a fabulous book on factoring and prime numbers! I can't wait to get my class drawing the monsters. This resource is amazing. I've never noticed this before, but it really shows up when you draw them, how lonely the prime numbers are. Remarkable.

Bead Bar Stamp Set

Yes, this is a Montessori post. Sometimes I need to make notes on great supplies or resources, and they might be helpful to other homeschooling philosophies as well. There is no question that, HANDS-DOWN, Montessori has the best Math materials ever invented. One of the greatest lessons is Multiplication on the Checkerboard. For this work, I've been wishing for a set of Bead Bar Stamps. And I found Great Extensions stamp company! They make rubber stamps for all kinds of math and language lessons. They also take PayPal.

Black History Month

The Music teacher is teaching Jazz as a part of Black History Month (Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, etc.)

She's using picture books such as








The Upper Elementary teacher showed her students an amazing documentary called The Children's Marchwhich I highly recommend for older students.




Looking at the most recent Newbery honor books, this year's One Crazy Summerand last year's Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justicewould also be relevant this month.






There are so many wonderful resources out there! I love

and I would appreciate people writing in with other books and resources that they suggest.

Awesome Math Book

I have been super busy and haven't posted lately, but I wanted to quickly write to recommend a new math book (new to me). It's called The Man Who Counted: A Collection of Mathematical Adventures

This fabulous book would work well as a read-aloud story with a hands-on math lesson at the end of each chapter. I recommend it for grades 3 and up. I especially love that it is translated from another language and takes place in a location that is rarely covered in my read-aloud stories.

Hands-on Exploration of Capacity

Here is how I introduced Volume.

We began with a work station on Monday morning: a variety of containers set out on a mat, all with the milliliter measurements on the side covered over with masking tape. These were containers such as vanilla extract, facial lotion, vinegar, cooking oil, and so on. The students were asked to order them according to how much liquid each container could hold. Then they were to try to find the two that had the same capacity (they were radically different in shape). I found that students were using a lot of mathematical language in their discussion of which of our mystery containers had the greatest capacity. I saw students getting out rulers, and explaining to one another that you had to measure the container in more than one direction to compare their size.

The can of hair spray, being tall and thin, caused the most discussion. Some children were insistent that it held the most simply because it was tallest. Others kept moving it to another spot, because it wasn’t very wide and, they argued, it didn’t hold much. I gave everyone time to visit this station before we had our Morning Meeting.

During Morning Meeting I went around and asked the children to say what item they would move to another place in the line and WHY. We had a wonderful discussion, and I saved taking off the masking tape for the very end, at which point I revealed the correct order of the containers. During the meeting, when a lot of people were saying, “it doesn’t just matter how tall it is, it is how fat it is that matters,” a student pointed out that there were actually three sides that had to be measured, which led us to then working with the volume cubes, and finally learning the formula for calculating the volume of a rectangular prism. One child even became interested in the challenge of measuring the volume of a sphere, and pulled me aside to explain to me some of his ideas for doing that.

After our hands-on exploration with the milliliter, I explained the units of liter and kiloliter, and we referred to the Wooden Hierarchical material again to understand the scale.

By the way, even with colored masking tape over the mL measurements on the containers, I still needed to scribble with Sharpie over it. But the masking tape pulls off nicely in the end, and the Big Reveal is a fun moment.

My two containers of the same capacity were a 250 mL squat glass bottle of maple syrup and a 250 mL aluminum can of La Tourangelle Toasted Pumpkin Seed Oil






Not a single person guessed correctly.

Worksheets for Volume

Some quick links to worksheets for volume. I'm sorry that I don't have time to write up our volume/capacity lesson from this morning right now... but I will as soon as I can. It was awesome!

I never would have expected my students to spontaneously get out rulers and start arguing among each other -- using mathematical language and reasoning of course -- but since they did I am online looking quickly for resources to help me show them how volume is calculated and some practice pages for those who want more.


Volume Cubes - Easy

Volume Cubes - Harder

Volume Cubes - Hardest


Montessori has a material for building figures and calculating their volume using small wooden cubes, so these sheets will be easy to implement in the classroom.



Small Wooden Cubes for Volume with Box

Or, if you are going to teach the traditional formula, try
Volume of a Rectangular Prism (l x w x h)


And, if you're the type who likes to make your own worksheet, try WorksheetWorks.com - Calculating Volume. This website allows you to customize the problems on the page (simple figures or complex figures, English/Imperial units or metric units or a combination of both, and your desired paper size). Then it creates a free worksheet for you with reproduction rights allowed for a home or classroom for up to fifty students. And they give you an answer key!