Posted by Cindy on December 11, 2008
Our “math break” continues to bring lively and rich lessons! One of the projects from Hardhatting in a Geo-World
concerned bridge construction. We had to make six different bridges and test their strength.
After completing the activity and filling in the chart provided, I had the kiddos show their findings with homemade graphs.
The book talked a little about why some bridges were stronger than others, but we wanted to know more. I found this very cool site linked from THINK’s blog.
We also decided to complete her Bridge Challenge.
Caleb’s first attempt (not so strong.)
Caleb’s second attempt (much stronger.)
Mahayla’s bridge.
Tomorrow – we’re off to do some Christmas problem solving! You can find some links here. Happy Christmas learning!
Posted by Cindy on November 10, 2008
October/November = lots of falling leaves and lots of candy. What better to do with both of those things? Math, of course! 
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Whether you have extra M&M’s, Skittles, Smarties, Runts, or just a big bunch of assorted candy bars, take a few minutes to turn those sweets into more than cavities. Even little bitty ones can sort candy, place the pieces on a blank grid, then color a bar graph. As the kiddos get bigger, all the more fun they can have graphing their candy. Here’s a post from last year about how we used M&M’s to do all sorts of graphs. This year, we did some candy graphing, but not quite as in depth as last year.
And don’t forget all those autumn leaves! Make a nature walk even more productive by collecting a sack of leaves to sort and graph.
Literal or concrete graphs are not only fun, but help younger ones understand better what a graph on paper represents.
After making the concrete graphs, my children jotted the information and used centimeter grid paper to design their own graphs.
Happy graphing!
Posted by Cindy on October 15, 2007
Talk about a fun week of math learning! Here are a couple of the activities my children did during our week of m&m math fun. Overall, we covered estimation, sorting, counting, adding, word problems, pictographs, bar graphs, comparison graphs, pie graphs, graphs made in a spreadsheet program, fractions, fair shares (division), mean/median/mode, decimals and percentages. I’d say that was enough math to rival any textbook curriculum for a week!
http://www.col-ed.org/cur/math/math26.txt
graphing and probability
http://score.kings.k12.ca.us/lessons/mandm.html
estimating, sorting, counting, graphing, plotting, fractions, percentage, and calculating mean, median, mode
http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/donovan/documents/M%20&%20M%20Math%20Intermediate_files/M%20&%20M%20Math%20Intermediate.htm
predicting, classifying, graphing, percentages
http://ofcn.org/cyber.serv/academy/ace/math/cecmath/cecmath013.html
averages with m&m cookies
http://www.lessonplanspage.com/MathEstimationClassification.htm
easy estimation and classification
http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/pdf.htm?m&mschart.pdf
printable m&m graph
http://www.create.cett.msstate.edu/create/classroom/lplan_view.asp?articleID=98
collect, graph, record and interpret data to create a bar graph on the computer
http://www.learnnc.org/lessons/KarenWalker5232002614
estimate, sort, graph and add with printable charts near the bottom
http://www.beaconlearningcenter.com/Lessons/2622.htm
fractions, decimals and percentage
http://www.mms.com/us/fungames/
official m&m website
http://www.ciese.org/math/activities/candycircles/index.html
mean, median and mode
http://42explore.com/choclat.htm
many, many chocolate related activities and links
