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Emerging

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Adds using manipulatives


Featured Math Vitamins:

Creating Space Inventions
| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook

Story: In this vitamin activity, students are adding with manipulatives. Children are building a design and then working to calculate the total number of pieces or for some the total value of their design in centimeters. Some students in the video are creating a design and counting the total number of blocks they have used; this is work directed at their current level of understanding. You see other students working to figure out the value for all the different lengths of rods they are using (one rod might measure four centimeters long), and adding those values together for a total sum of centimeters. You’ll note that each student is building and talking about their work, drawing a model of what they built and writing an equation to match.

Suggested manipulatives: Pattern Blocks, cuisenaire rods, base ten blocks,

Prep time: Adapting the vitamin wording to fit your specific story, putting manipulatives out in the room, creating the design sheets and/or copying the vitamin documentation forms will take about 15-20 minutes. Set up is always more fun and shorter on time if you do this activity with a colleague.

Classroom time: Asking children to “do their best work” for each Math Vitamin assumes that some children will need a longer time than others. Ideally you want to offer a block of time for Math Vitamin projects and have another task available (writing, free exploration etc.) for those students who finish work prior to their peers. For this project allow 20-45 minutes for students to work through all the steps.

How to individualize/stretch: Make up fun stories related to something you are studying in your classroom and get kids counting and adding items together. Kids first start by counting items with finger, voice, touch matching. Once they have this skill, increase the numbers for rote counting and begin having them count two groups of items. Continue to build skills, with larger numbers and learning to “count on” to existing numbers. Add more complex manipulatives (higher levels of abstraction) and have students begin to explore adding sets.


Building a Snowball Family

In this lesson, students are asked to make a snow family using cubes. Snow grown-ups are three cubes, snow children are two cubes, and snow pets are one cube. Once they've built their family, students will find the value of the total number of "snowball" cubes used.

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook

Story:Over winter break Mr. Doodle & Betty Blueprint visited a snow village on Icicle Island. They noticed that adult snow people were made from 3 snowballs, children from 2 snowballs, and pets from 1 snowball. Create your own snow family. How many snowballs do you use?

Suggested manipulatives: Unifix cubes, multilinks, wooden cubes, centimeter cubes, color tiles, sugar cubes.

Prep time: 5 minutes to put out the manipulatives and make sure you have copies of the Math Vitamin sheets.

Classroom time: Asking children to do their best work for each Math Vitamin assumes that some children will need a longer time than others. Ideally you want to offer a block of time for Math Vitamin projects and have another task available (writing, free exploration, etc.) for those students who finish prior to their peers. For this project allow 20-60 minutes for students to work through all the steps.

How to individualize/stretch: For children just beginning to count, you can tell them how many people are in their snow family so they can still be successful with this task. For those ready for more of a challenge, assign a value to each snow person (each adult snow person is worth 7 snowbits, etc), and have them use Cuisenaire rods and counting tracks to add the total snowbit value for the entire family they create.


Go to related Common Core State Standards:


Math Vitamins:

Ages 3-6

Find Value of Cuisinaire Rod Combos

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook Over the river and through the woods to Oxbow Farm we go! Next week, we'll travel to the farm to harvest some vegetables for our annual Stone Soup celebration. Antsy Nancy and Grant the Ant have already perused the vegetables that we may pick. In fact, they've even had a few nibbles of each! Each bite equals one unit. How many bites does it take to eat a red beet? How about a yellow squash? Dark green dinosaur kale? Try them all! Build, record and write equations for your vegetables. Mmmm!

Make 10-20 with Cuisinaire Rod Combos

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook "Whew! I'm stuffed!" exclaimed Grant the Ant after 10 bites of veggies on Friday. "Not me," responded Antsy Nancy. "I ate 20 and feel like I could still eat a horse...er...ah...radish."

Use color rods to figure out some 10-bite combinations for Grant. For example, Grant could eat one light-green pear, one red beet and a yellow squash (3 bites + 2 bites + 5 bites = 10 bites). What 20-bite combinations could Nancy eat?

Build Objects with Rods

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook Wendy, John and Michael just arrived in Neverland with Peter and Tinkerbell. These are some of the things they see as they fly in: lagoon, cave, pirate ship, mermaids, fairies, and crocodiles. Choose one or a few of the items they see to build with Cuisenaire rods. What is the value of your item?

Inspired by Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Build Objects with Rods 2

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook Quick, the Pirates are coming! The Lost Boys all dash to their hollow trees and escape into the secret underground home. What do you imagine this place looks like? Use the Cuisenaire rods to design an underground space for Peter and his friends. What is the value of your design?

Inspired by Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Buying from the Market with Coins

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook Come on down, the farmer's market is open for business! Bring your appetite, shopping bags and money. See your teacher to find out how many items to purchase, then start shopping.

Prices: strawberries 15c, potatoes 9c, broccoli 17c, blueberries 12c , kale 6c, carrots 8c, asparagus 11c, onion 8c

Buy Ingredients for a Recipe

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook Hey Chefs! Grab your caps, we want to share all our new garden goodies with a gathered group. Choose a recipe card from below and go shopping for the ingredients at the Farmers Market.

Spring Salad: 1 bunch kale, strawberries, spinach
Pasta Primavera: asparagus, carrots, broccoli, onion
Fruit Tart: strawberries, blueberries

Prices: strawberries 15c, potatoes 9c, broccoli 17c, blueberries 12c , kale 6c, carrots 8c, asparagus 11c, onion 8c

Graph Coin Types & Find Value

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook We're beginning the morning with a money graph. To start, grab one handful of coins from the jar. Then use the bar graph to help you organize and count the different coins you gathered. How much is each collection worth? What is the total value of your entire collection?

4 Ways to Make Value with Coins

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook To market to market! We go once again! This time you are the farmer selling fruits and veggies. Four different customers want to buy the same item, each with a different combination of coins. Choose an item and model four different ways to pay for it with coins.

Onion- 20c, tomatoes- 25c, strawberries- 45c, peas- 50c

Balancing Toys with Dr. Seuss

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook "I know some new tricks." Said the Cat in the Hat. "A lot of good tricks. I will show them to you. Your mother will not mind at all if I do" "Look at me! Look at me now! I can hold up a cup and the milk and the cake. I can hold up these books and the fish on a rake. It is fun to have fun but you have to know how"

That cat can balance lots of things in both hands! Let's help him count them all. Ask a teacher how many things he had in each hand and figure out many he had all together.

Ages 6-8

Adding Pieces in Dream Snack

| Download Math Vitamin :   PDF   Notebook Let's build ourselves a dream snack of only our favorite things. Below is a list of the nine treats that we chose from, and the number of pieces in each serving.

Raisins- 12, Starburst- 2, Popcorn- 23, Sour stick- 1, Apricots- 4, Licorice dog- 3, Banana chips- 5, Apple- 6

Build a snack of your favorite things! How many pieces of food are in your bag? Remember to build, draw and write about your creation. Use words to label and explain your thinking.

Math Continuum > Emerging > Adds using manipulatives