Day 5- Counting by 2s Cha-Cha

My favorite part of Toy Story 3 was at the very end, during the credits. I love when Jessie the Cowgirl grabs up Buzz Lightyear and they dance around the room. They made a perfect pair!

There's just something about having a good partner that makes life fun.

Guess what? Numbers feel the same way! There's a saying, "One is the loneliest number", and it's true! It doesn't feel good to be the only one left out. It makes one feel "ODD".
Today we worked on making perfect partners to dance the 2s Cha-cha! The key is to make things "EVEN".

Here's how I explained the difference between odd and even numbers to the kids. I had the kids hold out their two fists, then point one finger and I asked them, "Look at your other hand. Does your finger have a partner to dance with?" The answer was , "No".  Then I told them, "That one finger feels left out, he is an odd number."
I then asked the kids to put out one finger on the other hand as well, then face the fingers together; and lo and behold... the first finger now had a partner!

 I explained that the number problem was 1+1=2, and 2 was an even number. There was one finger out on each hand, that made them even.
Now it was time to test their minds a little. We already proved that it took two fingers to make a perfect pair, but what if you threw another finger into the mix?

I asked the basic questions- How many fingers are on each hand? How many fingers are there in all? Then I had them put their hands together to see if they made perfect matches...

As you can see, there was one perfect pair, and one left out. 1+2=3; 3 is an odd number since one was left without a partner.

We went through number 10 seeing which numbers were even (had perfect partners) and which were odd (one finger left out)
After we determined the even numbers... it was time to Cha-Cha! Check out our mini-lesson! (It's a big file, so I will do it in its own post)

"What else did you do today?" you might ask. Thanks for asking. :)

We are working on using ABC books as informational texts- finding out things about different topics by using ABC books.  But I wanted to know if my students knew their ABCs enough to be able to sort some pictures I had onto an ABC chart. Basically, we were working on identifying beginning sounds, and sorting them alphabetically.
The kids were great! I called each team to my table for 5 min at a time (to practice small groups). Each student got to pull a few pictures out of a baggie, say the name of the picture, and glue the picture on the chart under the right letter. Of course I got some pictures.

 Team 1 with the A-F page

Team 2 with the G-L page

 Team 4 with the M-S page

Team 5 with the T-Z page

WHERE'S TEAM 3????
They were taking too long cleaning up their table so I skipped them until their center box was cleaned up. Don't worry, I got a picture of them too!

Since I never got around to posting the picture of our Touch Math chart, I let them be the models for it.

Basically, today we worked on cooperation- making perfect pairs, and working with our Team. Awesome job, Soldiers!

p.s Special thanks to Ms. Amanda Arellano for taking the video of the mini lesson, and to Ms. Beckett for letting me use her hands in the math pictures! You ladies are wonderful!