Number Stories and Mixed Up Friends

Each morning after wake-up work and before reading workshop we sing. This morning we learned a new song called Singing Time...which brought some smiles to our Monday morning faces. Later in math we began talking about number stories. We googled some images from the computer and through the IBEAM used them to illustrate our story problems. Our hands down favorite pic was the donuts...if you can imagine! We used our white boards to record our thinking without using numerals. Later we used pennies from our tool kits to solve various problems like, "If Michael read 10 books last summer and his best friend Hank read 5 books, how many more books did Michael read?" It proved to be a wonderful thinking time...especially on a Monday morning!
Today we also had our Guidance Class with Mrs. Perry. On Mondays we don't get much afternoon recess time due to Science Workshop, so she held class on the playground and titled it Mixed-Up Playground. The challenge was for every child to play with 3 others they don't usually play with and then talk about the experience. What a great way to make new friends!