Dear Parents,

Welcome to Numbers Big & Small! We really enjoyed the enthusiasm of your children today. Their contributions to our math discussions were impressive.  We briefly discussed how we know students are coming to math class from different schools, grades, and background knowledge. We are having fun and playing with math.

This morning, we played a few math games to get to know each other. One involved clues about ourselves, which all included numbers. (For example: I am 136 cm tall. My address is 2045. I visited 3 foreign countries.) Today, we discussed the confusion from The Phantom Tollbooth where Milo is looking for the largest number, and the Mathemagician misunderstood with a giant-sized number 3.  Then, we read Math Curse and How Big Is a Million.

As a class, we solved a multiplication logic mash-up where some numbers are represented by pictures.  Together, we worked step-by-step to solve the puzzle and figure out what the numbers represent by the pictures. The students were quick with today’s logic brainteasers.

Our first “Would You Rather” question asked, “Would you rather have $1.50 for every month, or $.05 for every day?” We were so pleased with the rationalizations the students had for their choices!

We figured out how many people can sit in the Vanderbilt Stadium and estimated how many centimeter cubes it would take to cover the whole floor of our classroom.  Using centimeter cubes, rulers, and calculators, the students came up with ideas and shared their strategies.  In the end, we worked as a whole class to calculate that the room would need 722,925 cubes to cover the floor.  We saw a video showing how big 1 million jelly beans would be.

At the end of the day, we started to learn to play the game 5 Crowns, a 5-suited card game of strategy and chance with a unique twist on the game of rummy.  We may continue tomorrow as they were just getting the hang of it.

Dinner table questions:

We look forward to tomorrow!

Warmly,

Ms. Elizabeth and Ms. Madden