Curriculum
Kindergarten: Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematics Behaviour
- Demonstrate an understanding of numbers, using concrete materials to explore and investigate counting, quantity, and number relationships (#15).
Context
- Students and teacher will be sitting on the carpet in a circle.
- Later, the students will split up into pairs or threes to build ladybug houses.
Materials
- Planko or any other material to make a square
- Small ladybug toys – lots!
Lesson
- Tell students that they will build ladybug houses.
- Demonstrate that four pieces of planko joined together makes a ladybug house.
- Instruct children to work with a certain number of ladybugs. Start with lower numbers and increase as children get more proficient.
- Using the chosen total number, ask students to decide how many ladybugs should go inside the house and how many should go outside.
- Split students into pairs and ask them to make as many combinations as possible (e.g. if they are working with the number 10, students could put 5 ladybugs inside and 5 outside, or 6 inside and 4 outside).
- Ask students to choose their favourite ladybug house.
- As students announce how many ladybugs are inside and outside, the teacher writes the math equation on the board.
- Take a picture of their work for documentation or the extension activity outlined below.
Look Fors
- Do children notice patterns such as 7 + 2 = 9 and 2 + 7 = 9?
- How fluently can children make different combinations of the target number?
- How do children add numbers together? Do they use one-to-one correspondence?
Extensions
- Using the pictures taken previously, have students pick 3 of their favourite houses, write a math equation for it, and draw the equivalent picture.
- Scaffold their learning by writing out ______ + ______ = _______ and drawing a box beside it to represent the ladybug house.
