HANDS-ON FUN

This week we had a great deal of fun in Math and Science!  Lots of hands-on activities!  My district purchased brand new Math manipulatives this year, so my students will have a great year using them!  We just started our unit on Place Value, and the students enjoyed "playing" with the new Base Ten Blocks.  One student set out a certain number of blocks, and their partner counted them.  Working with three digit numbers was easy for them but they had a lot of fun refreshing their memories from Second Grade before we move on to adding more digits.

In science, we also had a fun week of hands-on investigations!  First up was my personal favorite that I like to call "Buried Treasure".  I buried some treasure (well, ok, maybe not real treasure, but things like paperclips, magnets, rubber bands, erasers, etc...)  The students used magnets to find all of the magnetic items, and then used their hands to find the rest of the buried treasure.  They sorted all of the treasure by Magnetic or Non-Magnetic, and recorded their data.  They really enjoyed this!

We also worked on measuring mass this week in Science.  Our new Math manipulative set came with plenty of these really nice balances.  The students had to make predictions before actually measuring the items.  It was interesting to listen in on their conversations, and hear their excitement when their predictions were close to the actual mass!  

For more hands-on Math, check out my Guest Blog over at Math Teacher Tales!