Our "math board" activities come from the Math Their Way Summary Newsletter which is a companion book to Math Their Way by Mary Barratta Lorton.
Each day we hang up a numeral that corresponds with the number of days we have been in school. I don't use the adding machine tape that is described in the book, I write each numeral on a seperate die cut icon. This year they were fish. If the numeral was a counting by 5 number I colored the top fin red. If the numeral was a counting by 10 number then I colored the bottom fin blue. I colored the tail with red and blue stripes on the 100th fish. Each day we count by ones, fives and tens to the new number we hung up. After we get past day 100, we usually only count one of the ways, since this becomes time consuming.
Then we add a corresponding colored toothpick to our "ones" cup, which is a clear plastic cup tacked to our bulletin board. When there are ten sticks in the ones cup we bundle them and move them to the tens cup and when there are ten bundles in the tens cup, we bundle them into a "jumbo bundle" and place it in the hundreds cup. This way the children are building the idea of place value little by little.
Then we look at our calendar. I go ahead and place all the calendar pieces on the calendar at the beginning of the month, even though the book suggests to build the calendar day by day. I like to be able to use the calendar for looking ahead. The pieces on the calendar are in a pattern. At the beginning of the month we "read" the pattern, describing it in different ways by color or shape,etc. We also use rhythms to describe the pattern. A red-blue-red-blue-red pattern might be snap-clap-snap-clap-snap. We read the day's date from the calendar, as well as the date from yesterday and for tomorrow. In February, in conjunction with President's Day, we begin studying coins. We tape up the value of coins that equals the date. For instance we tape up 3 pennies on Feb 3 or a nickel and 3 pennies on Feb. 8. We discuss all the different ways to make various amounts of money, but tape up the one that uses the fewest coins. In April and May, we do "quick equations" which are math sentences that the answer is the current date. For May 5 we had equations such as: 5+0=5, 5-0=5, 105-100=5, 4+1=5, etc. The kids take great pleasure in coming up with math sentences using big numbers such as 905-900=5 or 1005-1000=5.
Next we practice putting 3 numerals in order. We use the dates from yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The children identify the numerals and then state which comes first, second and last.
We keep a tally of the number of school days each month. The kids learn that we make a diagonal line across the marks for 5 and we loop two groups of 5 when we get to 10. That way we can use our knowledge of counting by 5's and 10's in yet another way.
Each day the leader steps outside to check the weather and colors the appropriate space on our monthly weather graph. Then the children make statements of comparison using the graph as a reference. We sing a song to the tune of BINGO which goes with whatever kind of weather (sunny, windy, cloudy, foggy, rainy, snowy) we have.
I went outside the door today,
And sunny was the weather,
SUNNY, SUNNY, SUNNY
And sunny was the weather!
Even as I write this, I have a new idea! We could make masks (with a round cut out for the face) for each type of weather and the leader could wear the mask and lead the song for the class.
We also keep a graph of who has lost teeth for the month and compare who has lost more between the boys and girls. We read a tooth poem if someone has lost a tooth to celebrate. It goes like this:
I lost a tooth
But I don't care
Another one
Is growing there!
If you decide to do a tooth graph it is important to discuss with your kids how not everyone will lose a tooth this year and how they fall out when it is time. Some children who never lose a tooth will become frustrated at this activity. I read the book Loose Tooth (I can't remember the author, but it was published by Scholastic) which deals with two brothers who are bats who have this same problem.
Finally we end our math board time with the song for the month from Chicken Soup with Rice by Maurice Sendak. These songs have interesting vocabulary to discuss, some repetition in how they are presented and a catchy tune. The kids enjoy them!
I have heard other teachers say and have experienced myself that sometimes the children grow tired of the math board as the year wears on. It is very repetitive, but through this repetition the children really internalize these math skills. To combat this be sure to do the daily activities in an upbeat way at a quick pace. Completing the math board each day shouldnt take longer than 10 minutes once the routine is established if the teacher is leading it. There is no reason to belabor any of the finer points of the board, because you will go over and over it again. So just touch on each thing and move on. Some teachers have the students take over the math board later in the year and there is certainly value to that. It allows the child to speak in front of his/her peers and teach the information that he/she is supposed to be learning. I used to do this, but found that having the students lead the board was too slow paced to keep everyone's attention, so I no longer do this. Finally with the songs and poems added into the board, the children have a little change of pace throughout the activity.
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