How to play?

The worm in the box exercises the ability to divide numbers. The game starts with the teacher and the children investigating how many beads make up the worm’s body. Count the beads in different ways, both backwards and forwards. The teacher takes out the matchbox and tells them that this is the worm’s house. It is important to draw the children’s attention to the number on the house and link it to the number of beads on the worm.  The teacher explains and demonstrates that the worm crawls into the house and hides and then the house closes. Ask the children: how many beads of the worm’s body are inside the house? How do you know? How many are outside the house? Open the house and see how many there are.

What is the purpose of the game?

The purpose of the worm in the box is to practice the ability to divide numbers. It is a concrete and clear way to make addition and subtraction visible to the children. In order to understand the relationship between parts and whole, it is important that the whole is discernible. The worm in the box helps children to practise the ability to automate the division of numbers.

How to make the game?

I have used small matchboxes which I have lined with coloured paper with a number on it. This becomes the worm’s house. I made the worm itself by stringing beads on a thread and tying the ends of the thread. How many beads you need depends on the number you want to practice with the children. My suggestion is to make nine worms with corresponding houses, with numbers two to ten to practice different numbers.

The idea is taken from Mattelekar i förskolan

Take two sheets of newspaper, lay them out flat and start rolling it from one corner. The tighter the roll the more support you’ll have. My boys aren’t tight rolling masters yet but they did pretty well for their first time!

Secure the end with a small piece of tape. An ideal amount would be around 48 but it can be enough with less. Next, you’ll be making triangles with your newspaper rolls. Tape or staple the ends together to form a triangle.

Create as many triangles as you can with your newspaper rolls. Finally, you’ll secure each triangle to each other creating whatever size structure you want!

Your structure size will depend on how many triangles you made. Just make sure you have enough for the roof which will provide the final stability for your fort.  You can secure the “joints” with some extra staples or tape to be sure it doesn’t move around too much.

The rest is up to your imagination! The structure should even be sturdy enough for a blanket on top!

The idea is taken from https://modernparentsmessykids.com/play/

Tami’s Tower exists as an iPad app and an web application around constructing stable tower. You can get to think a whole lot around design a physics with this.

Lesson plan: Tami’sTower (PDF, 552 kB)

Go Fish!

Go Fish is a pair-seeking game.

Players each have their own hand of 5 cards.

• Players ask their opponents for a card that pairs with a card in their own hand.
• Basic play begins with making matched pairs.
  • For example, if you have a card with five dots you would ask you opponent for another card with five on it.
  • If your opponent has the card, they give it to you, and then you keep asking for cards until your opponent does not have the card you request and says, “Go Fish!”
  • You get to pick from the pile of face-down cards in the “fishpond.”
  • If you make a match you continue.
  • If not, it is the other player’s turn.
  • The game continues until all the cards are paired up.
  • Players count their pairs, and the player with the most pairs, wins the game.

Match ‘Em/Memory

Match ‘Em or Memory are similar pair-seeking games that allow you to adjust the memory challenge. In both games, cards are arranged in an orderly array on the floor or a table.

In Match ‘Em, the cards are face up; in Memory, the card are face down.

Players take turns finding pairs.

The game is over when all the pairs are matched.

Capture

Capture is a comparison game also known by the traditional name of “War.”

To play, deal the entire deck of cards among the players.

Players show their cards at the same time, and the person with the greatest number wins the round and takes the cards.

When the cards run out, the game is done, and players can count their cards to see who has the most cards.

Things to Consider

While all these games can be played with a standard deck of cards, you will want to give some thought to how you create a deck to match your child’s math skills. Some things to consider:

• Use quantity cards that show a pictorial representation of a number. This helps children develop their visual number sense as well as their computational fluency.
• Start with cards 0-5 for preschoolers; 0-10 for kindergarten
• The size of the deck (number of cards in play) should be appropriate for children’s age and experience. Small hands can only hold a small hand of cards!
• Use small arrays of cards to play Memory at the start such as a 3 x 4 array of 12 cards. Arrange cards face-up or face-down to vary the memory challenge based on children’s age, experience playing, and the math skill they are working on. If it is a new concept, even for older children, face-up may be the way to play the first few times.
• Fewer cards in the deck means faster games that keep children’s attention. When games are quick, they can be played again and again, which eases the disappointment of losing.

YOU WILL NEED: Printable board game, bricks, and a six-sided dice

• Start by printing out a copy of the game. You can laminate it or put it in a page protector sheet for longevity.
• Gather a bunch of basic building bricks such as 2x2s or 2x4s (use whatever works best for you)
• Have the kiddos choose a minifigure as a game piece or build something fun to represent their player on the board
• Determine who will go first by the highest die roll and start the play!
• Whoever has the tallest tower at the end wins. Ideally, everyone should have the opportunity to finish the game.
• Build your tower and count the bricks to determine the winner!
• Play again and again.

Model of the board: LEGO-build-a-tower-game (PDF, 525kB)

Idea from littlebinforlittlehands

In this activity, you explore an image from a newspaper or a cartoon by thinking about how the image sounds.

Tool:

1. magazine (for children)
2. Tools for creating soundscapes: spoons, jars, pens, rattles, etc..

Focus on sound

The teacher asks the group to be very quiet and listen to what sounds can be heard in the room. They also think about the sounds that they hear in the kitchen at home, or out on the playground, or on the street.

Choosing and viewing the image

The group looks for an image in a magazine and creates a sound world for it. Discuss the image together: who or what is in the picture? What is the mood of the picture, is it cheerful, sad, summery? The picture can also be a cartoon.

Design of a soundscape

Think together about what the story might sound like. The teacher gives the children different tools to create sounds and together they experiment to see what sounds they can create. If the selected image is a cartoon, the teacher can re-read it, and now the children can gild the story with sound.

Does the picture smell?

After listening to the audio story, they can think about what smells or smells flow into their nostrils in the kitchen or on the street. What smells or smells can be associated with the selected image or drawing?

 

Supplies

• Large plastic cup (like a Solo cup)
• Small plastic cup
• Decorative pieces (pompoms, beads, pipe cleaners, tinsel, pine needle, pine cones, dried berries, etc.)
• Food coloring
• Tape
• Water
• A freezer or it needs to be below zero outside
• Battery operated candle (or tea light)

Directions

The first step is to decide on your decorations. This is the engineering challenge! We found it was best to take pipe cleaners and twist them so they spiraled up on the inside of the large cup. These acted as your garland and as a place to put all your other baubles so they stayed in place.

Now carefully place pompoms and beads so they balance on the garland. This can be challenging and they will move once you add water, so don’t stress too much.

Pro Tip! If you wish to be more environmentally conscious, natural materials like pine needles, small pine cones, dried berries and even small rocks or crystals all worked beautifully as well. The key is that they need to be small.

Once you are happy with your decorations slide the small cup inside the large cup. Tape it into place so the top of the cups are flush with each other.

Add a few drops of food coloring to the water.

Carefully start to add water between the two cups so the water only goes into the larger cup. You will need to add some weight to the smaller cup to keep it in place and stop it popping up. We added a couple of stones to ours to keep it in place.

Fill until the water is only a couple of centimeters from the top. This is important.

Finally, place the lanterns in the freezer (or outdoors) for 5 hours or until completely frozen.

Take A Moment For Science

Once it is frozen take a moment to look at your creation. You should notice that despite the tape and the weights the smaller cup is higher and the ice is to the top of the large cup. This is due to water expanding as it freezes. This is a fantastic opportunity to see this in practice and discuss what happens when water changes states.

Revealing the Lanterns

Now carefully remove the inside plastic cup, then the outer plastic up. You may need to cut the cups to get them off. Just carefully snip the edge with some scissors and you should be able to peel them off.

For safety you can use battery operated candles, plus they won’t melt your lantern like a tea light.

Turn on your candle, set it outside in the wintery cold and enjoy the beauty of your creation!

Tip from STEAMPoweredFamily.com

Look for different geometric shapes and record them with a video camera. The aim of the exercise is to observe the environment and think about the meaning of geometric shapes in the environment and in visual communication. This exercise will help you to integrate videography into your mathematics teaching.

Use a video camera to film different shapes (circle, triangle, square). Look for shapes made by humans, animals and natural forces.

Each object to be filmed is first shown in extreme close-up. The camera is then moved away from the object until it is fully visible. Film 10 different objects.

The group’s task can be to look for either similar shapes or as many different shapes as possible. The pictures can also be used as photo-references: When viewing, the teacher can pause the picture with the pause button when there is a close-up of the object in the picture. Students can guess which object it is. The teacher then starts the video and the object is revealed.

Idea taken from Kamerakynäpakka: Matematiikka (kamerakynapakka.blogspot.com)

How strong is spaghetti?  Challenge kids to invent a way to find out!

Material

• 1 package of spaghetti
• 2 sheets of styrofoam
• Books
• Wooden blocks

We started our project by investigating how much weight spaghetti can hold when it’s vertical.  We quickly discovered that spaghetti is not very strong!  It bends very easily, and breaks easily.

I asked the boys if they thought multiple pieces of spaghetti could hold more weight, and possibly even hold up a book.  We tried sticking about 20 pieces of spaghetti into the styrofoam disk.

We decided to see if the spaghetti could hold up our large history book, and of course it could not…

We tried again with our test, and used LOTS of spaghetti.  I can’t remember how many pieces this was, but I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 200.  One of the challenges of balancing weight on top of spaghetti is that it bends and sways very easily!  We had good success putting another piece of styrofoam on top of the spaghetti, and then adding weight on top of that.

We were able to get 6 board books on top of the spaghetti!  Not a ton of weight, but hey – it’s spaghetti!

Then we devised a second test to investigate the strength of spaghetti when it is lying down horizontal.  Aidan built a small bridge out of blocks and laid the spaghetti across the bridge.  We were able to pull the spaghetti out of the styrofoam and use the same pieces.

Aidan put blocks on top of the spaghetti on each side to hold it in place.  Then he started adding weight in the middle.

Surprisingly, the spaghetti held a lot of weight!  I figured that it would be stronger this way than standing up vertically, but it was stronger than I thought it would be.

As Aidan added more weight to the center, he had to add more weight to the sides to keep the spaghetti in place.

What can we learn about the strength of materials from spaghetti?

This article from Scientific American explains what engineers are looking for when choosing the materials to design a bridge, and it has a neat experiment to test tension and compression in a bridge made out of spaghetti.  This is probably best for kids age 13+, but parents and teachers can also summarize the information for youngest students.  It’s not difficult to read, and I definitely learned something!

Challenge kids to invent their own way to test the strength of spaghetti!  Have fun investigating!

Thanks FrugalFun4Boys.com for the idea!

Throw a peabog towards a numbered gameboard.

If it lands on an even numer the player loses two clips, if it lands on an odd number he gains one.

Winner is the one who first stands without paperclips.

Exact rules for the game: Odd or Even Number (PDF, 72kB)