Careful Counting + Math Bags

Last year, I started a weekly routine called Math Bags, and loved the regular opportunity it gave us to apply math to every day objects. One of the most important math skills I try to encourage throughout the year is one-to-one correspondence, or careful counting: associating only one number name per object while counting. It seems like such a basic skill, but it is essential for both math and reading, and can be very tricky for young children. So that is the first skill we are practicing with our math bags right now.

Everyone gets a chance to share what they brought, and then counts it as they add it to the collection tray. This is a great chance for me to assess their ability to count objects and use one-to-one correspondence.

Next week we are going to start sorting through our collection, which is another mathematical skill that will give us practice with counting, comparing, and classifying.

As part of this routine, I also like to include a math story if I can. Bear Counts is one of my favorites to use at the beginning of the year.

 And of course, math bag time isn't the only time we practice careful counting or other math skills. Mathematical objectives are always integrated into our learning topics, and often we have games or activities set out that are focused solely on a certain skill.

One thing I love about the math bag routine is that it helps us to realize that math is everywhere! It's in objects that we find at home or outside or at school...I try to take any opportunity that I see to draw attention to the math in our everyday objects and experiences.

Math Bags and Writing Journals

This year I decided to change up my end-of-the-day routines to include math and writing on a regular basis. As with all the regular routines that I use in my classroom, I wanted these routines to be simple enough to be consistent, but also allow room for growth and individualization.

Math Bags

I found this idea for Math Bags on my favorite preschool blog, Teach Preschool, and wanted to try it out this as our weekly math routine. I love it because it is simple, very open-ended, and it allows the kids to be invested in the manipulatives we are using. So every Tuesday the students are bringing in up to 5 small, miscellaneous items from home that they are willing to donate to what we've been calling our "Math Collection."

First, everyone gets a chance to share what they brought, like a mini show-and-tell. This part of the process is a great chance for the kids to practice their oral language skills, and hopefully develop confidence with math vocabulary as the year progresses as well. Sometimes the kids will share stories with us about where they found the items, and sometimes they will just tell us what they brought. I always encourage them to count and tell us how many items there are, which allows me to observe their development of number sense and one-to-one correspondence.

How we interact with the items after the sharing time will vary throughout the year. Right now we are focusing on careful counting strategies, like lining the items up and touching them as we count.

This week we added sorting to the routine, and organized the items by color.

So far, I feel like it has been a successful routine and I'm excited to watch it grow and adapt as the students build their mathematical understanding. As our collection grows, I am also planning to include the items for different math activities in center choices time as well.

Writing Journals

The second routine that I've added to the end of the day is writing in our journals on Thursdays. Their writing journals are always available to them during center time, and many students use them on a regular basis for their own creative purposes. But I wanted to devote some additional time to writing about common learning topics together so that students could learn from each other and we could focus on specific writing skills where appropriate. 

Of course, writing in preschool is very developmental and can be as simple as making marks on the page. No matter the stage of writing development among my students, I emphasize the meaning behind whatever they are scribbling, drawing, or trying to write by asking them to tell me about their work. Then I model the writing process by recording what they tell me on the paper. 

This is also a great way for me to check in with the information they are processing and learning from our theme units. For example, today I prompted the students to write about sunflowers today since that has been our focus topic. It was interesting to hear the different aspects of sunflowers that each student focused on as they told me about their writing. Some told me about how the seeds come from the head of the flower, and some told me about the parts of the flower like the petals and the long, green stem, etc. 

 

As a teacher, I love using writing journals consistently because it is such a visual way to document growth over time. It's such a simple routine, and I'm glad that I've found a regular place for it in our weekly schedule. 

Math Bags: I Spy

After bringing items in our Math Bags throughout the year, we finished the project with a math celebration. We've been using the items every week to count, sort, make patterns and graphs, but for our celebration we used them for some "I Spy" activities.

We read I Spy Numbers to practice our spying skills...

Many of our items were set out at the table so the kids could make their own "I Spy" board.

Then we made I Spy bags using rice and ziploc bags. 

Everyone picked items from our collection to place inside.

Book Love: Over and Under the Snow

One of my favorite winter activities in snowshoeing, because I love the beauty and quiet of the mountains covered in snow. Over and Under the Snow by Katie Messner captures the wonder of life in a snowy forest, and was a great addition to our exploration of animals in the winter time.

Extension Activities: I set up a small world invitation with small forest animals and various winter-themed loose parts, including wood blocks and pine tree needles. Several children spent the majority of their time creating homes for the animals and letting their imaginations play.

At another time, we used the animals with snowy white playdough. Some children created homes and caves, while others explored making animal footprints.

We also used the concept of "over and under" to play some math games, first with loose parts from our Math Bags and then later using counting bears and "caves." This is a great game for practicing several different math skills, and you can play it with any sort of small object, and then a cup or bowl or something to hide them.

How to play the Over and Under game:
1. Count out a certain number of objects. (It's very important to determine how many objects you are starting with.) I set out some counting cards for the students to use if they chose.

2. Hide some of the objects under a cup or bowl.

3. Count how many are over the snow (or on top of the cave, etc.) and then figure out how many are hiding underneath. Some students chose to use the counting cards to help them visualize which ones were hiding, while others used their fingers or mental math strategies.

4. Check to see if your answer was right!

As students play this game, they are building counting skills and number sense, using one-to-one correspondence, composing and decomposing numbers, and trying out problem solving strategies.

Shapes from our Math Bags

 We are building up a great collection from all of our math bag items! Last week I gathered up some of the items, and set them out as an invitation to look for and create different shapes. It inspired some great shape work and creative exploring. 

Exploring Colors and Numbers

We have continued to be explorers this month is preschool, and I have been taking the opportunity to introduce basic topics that we will expand upon as the year goes by. This gives me the chance to get a better idea of the student's interests, needs, and abilities in those areas so I know where to take things in the future. Last week we spent some time thinking about colors.

We read Bear Sees Colors, and passed around different colored bears as we read the story. Then we looked around the classroom to see if we could find the same colors as Bear.

We explored using colors in art and in the sensory table with a little experiment using baking soda and colored vinegar.

We also explored the different shades of skin colors that people can have.

We read another Bear book called Bear Counts, along with starting our Math Bags routine. So we added a counting element to the colored bear table we had set up. For this simple game you just roll the colored dice and add a bear (or bears) to the grid. I let the students interpret how to add the bears, which gave me a chance to observe some of their number sense and counting skills.