Saturday, January 12, 2008

Wednesday CoOp



Reese & I hosted CoOp this past Wednesday & our morning was all about SHOES! I had some fun math centered activities planned & there's always lots of free play mixed in!



After our friends all arrived, I gathered everyone on the rug. We talked about our shoes & what colors we were wearing. We discussed who had laces & who had Velcro. Everyone was really excited to show their shoes!

After we talked about our shoe colors, I pulled out my bar graph. I've used the bar graph with our group before & the kids are really starting to grasp how to build a bar graph, what it represents, & how to read the graph.

We read the color names on the graph, & reviewed how to build the graph from bottom to top. Then everyone got a shoe that matched the color of their own shoes. One at a time, everyone came up & glued their shoe in the appropriate box on the graph.

After all the shoes were glued on the paper, we counted each color to find the greatest & least used color. We also talked about how we could "read" the graph just by looking at which bar was the biggest & which was the smallest (that's why the graph says big & small).

After we made our graph, I had everyone take their shoes off & put them in a big laundry basket on the floor. The children all took turns finding a matching pair. The only rule was that you couldn't pick your own shoes to match! It was cute to see how excited they got when it was their turn to find a pair that matched.

Next, everyone put the shoes back into the basket & we talked about other ways to sort. We made two piles next...one for shoes with laces and one for shoes without laces. Once all the shoes were put in the proper piles, we determined which pile had the most & which had the least.

One little girl said "What about a Velcro pile?" So then we took the "no laces" pile and sorted it further into Velcro & Slip On. It was fun to see the light bulb turn on in her head & see that there were more ways to sort!

The picture below is one reason we love homeschool. You can wear your Halloween Power Ranger costume to class & nobody bats an eye! Actually, one of Reese's friends came wearing HIS Blue Power Ranger costume & Reese immediately wanted to wear his own costume for the morning. Sure, why not? So we had two Blue Power Rangers in attendance.

For those who were interested, we next went into Reese's bedroom & played Sound Bingo. There were a few bird sounds that I wasn't sure about...but that's OK. They had a great time playing!

1 comment:

Texasholly said...

So glad we could start the power ranger trend, blue of course. I tried throughout the entire lesson to catch a picture with the two of them, but it wasn't meant to be. Those blue power rangers are quick. It was a really fun lesson.