Day 2- The Power of 10

Today's post revolves around our math lesson. Today we focused on making 10. That might not sound too exciting, but knowing "10 Facts" can help kids in all stages of math. Addition and subtraction starts with knowing how to get to the next set of 10s.
First, I gave out a "long" of ten base-10 blocks. (Longs is a math term you will hear often. Cubes are 1, longs are 10, and flats are 100.) Students also received a piece of paper folded in half. I used the ELMO (overhead projector) to show them what to write. It started out looking like this...

I asked the kids to look at their paper and tell me how many cubes were on the left; they answered zero. Then I asked them how many were on the right; they answered ten. Together, we all decided that that meant that 0+10=10. On a separate chart, we started writing the 10s facts.

 After we did zero, I told them to break apart their blocks and put one on the left side like what you see above. They came up with the number sentence of 1+9=10. What genius soldiers I have! We kept adding cubes to the left side until we covered all of our 10s facts.

Here are all of our 10s fact written down. I am going to go back and re-do the chart because I started writing too big. We will use this chart in our calendar time, and refer back to it when we learn things like turn-around facts, and doubles.

Activity for Home: Give your student 10 small objects (like pennies, beans, pencils, whatever you have around the house) and have them practice different ways of making 10. Example- put 3 things in your hand and have them reason out how many they would have left. 
Also, you can have your students make flash cards of the 10s facts. I have plenty of index cards- let me know if you need some!

We did other things today, like reading The Kissing Hand and doing a vocabulary and art activity with it.

We would love for you to come see it! We posted our activities in the hall next to our door.

And, of course, we have our Daily Brain for today!

PARENTS: I did send home folders today with their Number grids from yesterday. Please help your student finish their grid and SIGN IT. Thank you!