We started the week with an activity called "counting pockets."  We counted the amount of pockets each student had, and recorded the total number.  This was a great exercise on estimating, counting, comparing and combining, as the students collected, represented and interpreted data.

Later in the week, we read the book Math Curse, by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith.  It is a story about a girl who starts to think of everything as a math problem, and believes her teacher has given her a "math curse." We talked about how everything can appear to be a math problem when you start thinking this way.   Inspired by the book, we made up our own math problems and shared them with the class.  This was an amazing exercise as the students had to think about ways to express themselves and their mathematical ideas.  The problems had to be relevant, challenging enough but not too challenging, and interesting for their peers to solve.  The students loved coming up to the front of the class to write out and present their problems.

Plus 1 or 2 Bingo was also a favorite this week. We worked on our addition combinations while playing games with our friends.  Looking ahead to next week, we'll be learning more games to assist us with combinations of 10.

In closing, here is a link to an excellent article discussing the beauty of math.  Enjoy!

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/10/finding-the-beauty-in-math/

Writing our own problem on the board

Presenting our problem!

Finding a solution in our journals

Problem solving

Playing Plus 1 or 2 Bingo