The class was then divided into two teams. One team had a small white pumpkin, and the other team had a large orange pumpkin. We made predictions about how heavy the pumpkins were, how many stripes they had, the circumference, and of course, how many seeds they have.
We checked our checked our predictions about the weight, circumference (both metric and standard), etc. I was vey impressed at how close many of the students' predictions were!
We then cut open the pumpkins, took out the seeds, cleaned and toasted them.
After all the seeds we sorted we skip counted all of the seeds.
We then made repeated addition problems to represent our arrays.
Finally, we turned out repeated addition problems into more "efficient" multiplication problems and voila! we checked our predictions, worked in collaborative groups, learned problem solving strategies, multiplication has been introduced & made concrete, connected to prior knowledge and understanding, related to real world examples, and hopefully fun!
A special thank you to Tanya Hand and Lori Aycock for donating the awesome pumpkins!
I LOVE this!!! What a fun and engaging way to introduce multiplication!
ReplyDelete