math journals

We have used our morning message and out outdoor classroom time to count and represent numbers in different ways. On the fifth day of school I invited children to show 5 on a sticky note and attach it to our morning message. We did the same for the tenth day of school, noticing the many different ways we can show 10. During that week we also collected 10 things in nature, using a 10 frame to guide our work. These three experiences are the children's first entries in their math journals. Our journals are for important work. When I shared the prompts and sticky notes that I had glued in, we noticed that our journals were missing something- a beautiful front cover and names!

We read Triangle a math storybook by one of my favorite authors, Jon Klassen. We used what we know about the attributes of a triangle to draw in the same style as Klassen. We used ovals and circles for the eyes and rectangles for the legs.

The children's math journals now have a beautiful front cover. We have worked a lot with our names this week, connecting our name work to our learning about letters and sounds (literacy), social emotional learning (our names are important, we are important) and to our developing counting and cardinality skills.

On Wednesday the children counted the letters in their name and recorded how many. We talked about sharing our thinking, because mathematicians always show how they solved a problem using pictures or words. I love working in our math journals and will continue to provide problems that connect to our community, learning, and experiences.