Snowman Fun

Students first day back and the kids were perfect!  I expected some time would be needed to review expectations - and we did, a little, but it was just small reminders.  Of course, I had 3 kids absent so maybe that helped the class seem so calm.

We worked today on estimation, skip counting, and adding with a very large snowman.   I started the lesson by introducing estimation.  I asked if anyone had ever heard the term (they hadn't.)  Then I explained what it was - a good guess.  We looked at a bucket full of bottles of glue.  I carried it around the classroom and let everyone take a glance in the bucket.  I asked them to talk to a partner and estimate how many bottles were in the bucket.  They decided 15 or 17.  I asked them why they didn't choose 500?  They said it wouldn't fit.  I asked them why they didn't say 3.  They said it was obviously more than three.  I helped them make the connection that they were making a good guess by using what they know about buckets this size and the size of bottles of glue to estimate how many might fit into the bucket.  The actual number was 11 - I think they did pretty good!  Next, I pointed to a 6 foot snowman that I had made in the front of the room.  I told them we were going to cover the lower half of the snowman with snowflakes, but before we did that we needed to estimate the number of snowflakes that would fit on the snow man.  I gave each one of them a snowflake and let them come up to the snowman for 30 seconds just so they could see the snowflake next to the snow man and get an idea.  Then I passed out paper to everyone and they wrote their name and their estimate on it.  We put them all into a bucket and then put them aside.  I will check them to see who was the closest and that student will win a little prize (we ran out of time to check today.)

Next, I laid the snowman on the ground and we all sat around it.  I asked them how we should go about putting on and counting all of these snowflakes.  Of course they said just glue them and count.  I suggested that perhaps that would take a long time to count all those snowflakes one by one.  I asked them to think of a faster way to count the snowflakes.  We've worked a lot on skip counting, so I wasn't surprised when someone said we could count by two or five.  Then another student said it would be hard to keep track of which snowflakes we had counted.  I was really enjoying this discussion!  I asked how many snowflakes we would glue on if each student glued on 10 snowflakes.  Many of them looked at me like I was crazy, but then one sharp kiddo started counting by ten and pointing to each student.  The other students counted on and started helping her.  We came up with 120 snowflakes (some kids were in pull out - I don't usually have that small of a class!).  They thought that was too many.  So I said, ok, how about one each.  12 - nope that was too few.  So we finally settled on 5 each.  We all glued on 5 snowflakes each, I had a student write 50 on the board - but we still had more room.  We discussed more and decided that everyone putting on 5 more each would be too many so we should try just 2 each.  We each glued on 2 and I had a student write 24 under the 50 (get where it's going...)  We continued skip counting and deciding how many each person should put on until we had the snow man filled.  It took a lot of discussion to come to a consensus each round.  When we were done we added up all the numbers - 108 snowflakes in the end!

The kids had so much fun doing this. It was a great way to help them see how to use skip counting for something useful and great practice on estimation.  Each time we glued on more snowflakes they had to estimate how many more would need to be added into a smaller space.  So many skills were being used at once!  One girl started counting by fives to guess how many would go in the space left and another student asked her why she was counting by fives, then proceeded to explain to her why she should count by one when estimating unless she is picturing 5 snowflakes (she had been using her hand to size out the empty space and her hand is about the size of one snowflake).  I don't know if they actually needed me in the room :-)

The other first grade teachers on my team did the snowman estimation too.  One did a "Snow Boy" and the other did a "Snow Woman."  We had a little snow person family.  So cute!  

Well that was my fun for the first day back.  Anyone else have amazing discussions in class when you were expecting chaos???