Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites Chapter 7

Happy Saturday everyone!  I wanted to do this post earlier, but I was busy making these...

 And these...

 Mickey and Minnie cupcakes and Hello Kitty cupcakes!! Now I'm all ready to post about Chapter 7!  Deanna Jump is hosting the book study this week - thank you!!

I love all of the quotes in this book and this was my favorite from this chapter:"When students use manipulatives over a long period, they make gains in verbalizing their thinking, discussing ideas, taking ownership, and gaining confidence in independently finding answers to problems." (Sebesta & Martin, 2004)  Chapter 7 is called "Manipulatives, Experiments, Labs, and Models", but really should probably be called: "Kindergarten, Kindergarten, Kindergarten, and Kindergarten."  haha!  Kindergarten is sooooo hands-on which is why I loved this chapter!!
 Here are some of the manipulatives I have in my classroom:

   We are constantly using them for math activities...

Unifix cubes are awesome.

You can find gems like the ones here at the Dollar Store.  They make great manipulatives.

Red and yellow counters are great for math.

We used the magnetic counters from my ten frame magnet set to do this fun leprechaun math activity.

We have been adding to this chart throughout the past week to show what tools can help us add.  Many of the tools listed are manipulatives.

We also LOVE to use food as our math manipulatives...YUMMY!

We used goldfish crackers as our manipulatives to make this goldfish graph.

We were lucky to use Lucky Charms for our manipulatives for this math problem solving activity.

We used m&m's for the dots on the dominoes to help us count and make a yummy domino we could add with and eat!  You can find the recording sheet by clicking here!

 This STEM project involved my students using 100 marshmallows and 100 toothpicks to try to make the tallest tower.  We did this back on the 100th day of school.

 

When my students created their leprechaun traps earlier this month, they were making models of the plans they had created on paper.  Another fun, hands-on STEM lesson! 

For one of our science units, we discussed the needs of plants and animals.  We did some research prior to this activity by looking at ocean books and ocean videos.  We created a model of our learning to show the animals that need to live in the ocean.  Each kindergarten class picked a different habitat and created a model of that habitat.  My class created this ocean habitat model.  You can actually see all of our models in an old blog post by clicking here.

Our current unit we are teaching is maps and globes.  We had the kids create maps of our classroom.  To help them, they used unifix cubes for the objects in the classroom and then were able to trace around the cubes.  The cubes really helped to make the activity hands on for my students. 

Check out a great website for learning about maps by clicking here.  That is where the idea of using cubes to make the map came from.

My big "take away" from this chapter is that I would like to do more science experiments with my students.  Our next science unit is going to be "Forces and Interactions" and I am thinking this will allow for some different experiments and investigations!   I'm off to check out some of the other amazing bloggers who linked up!  Have a wonderful weekend everyone!