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.

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.