Pumped Up Math for Grades Pre-K- 2

Meg Dawkins, speech and language pathologist at Berlin Elementary, threw down the gauntlet (but in a sweet way, because she's Meg, and she's really sweet). She's got a garden brimming with vegetables, so she challenged me to come up with some ideas for how to integrate the veggies with lessons that target our WCSU Performance Indicators for math from kindergarten right on up to grade 6.  In this post, I'll share what I've come up with in the primary grades.

Pre K & Kindergarten - Focus on: Attributes, Quantity and Position of Vegetables

K.1 Distinguishing left from right - You can place three different vegetables in a line (a zucchini, a pumpkin and a pepper from left to right, for example). Introduce the idea of position. Have students make "statements" about the relative position of the vegetables. The pepper is to the right of the pumpkin and the zucchini.


K.2 Identify and describe shapes - Facilitate a discussion about the attributes of the vegetables. Compare these attributes to those of various 2D and 3D shapes and solids.


K.3 Counting up to 10 objects - Bring in an assortment of vegetables and place them in a line. First have students estimate how many vegetables there are. Then count them. How many of each type of vegetable is there? Bring in the words more, fewer and equal. You can incorporate left and right positionality, too, but asking questions like: How many are to the left of this pumpkin? Then rearrange the vegetables several different ways and ask questions to develop conservation of number: changes in position and arrangement do not change quantity.

First & Second Grade - Focus on: Number Concept, Additive Reasoning & Measurement

A teacher could use the Pre-K and Kindergarten ideas to formatively assess some of the kindergarten skills that might need a boost.  In addition (pun intended), you could do this:

K.8 Understanding Teens and 1.1 Additive problems up to 10 or 2.1 Additive problems up to 20 - Bring in a "mystery number" of vegetables between 10 and 20 and use them for a number talk (see here if you want more details on how to run a number talk). Cover the vegetables with a blanket or box. Tell the students that:

• There is a "mystery number" of vegetables. 
• You're going to let them peek at the vegetables for a few seconds. 
• You're going ask them use that peek to estimate what the mystery number is.

Reveal the vegetables and then cover them up again.  Ask students to close their eyes to visualize what they saw. Ask students to open their eyes. Ask them what they saw allowing students to use journals and/or concrete materials to show what they saw.  Then ask students for their estimates.  Use visual cluster cards, Cuisenaire rods and/or ten frames to show each student's guess. Post their guesses in numerals, visual representations and words.   Emphasize that their guesses are math statements and use words like: fewer, less, greater, more, equal (i.e., Carmen's guess was 8 and Luc's guess was 18.  How can we say about those two guesses?  How can we compare them?  Luc's guess is more than Carmen's.  Carmen's guess is ten less than Luc's.). 

Reveal the vegetables and ask students to show what they saw, focusing on visual clusters.  Use visual representations and equations and expressions to record what they saw.  

Did you see five?  Which five?  And then you saw another five?  What else?  Another two?  This pair over here?  So how did you decide that there were sixteen in all?

Once you've determined how many there are and looked at various ways of seeing that number, emphasize how many more than ten the number is.  Take away the ten and use the number of remaining vegetables (say six) as the number of the week.  

First grade students can focus on all the ways to make and break 6 that week using the commutative and associative properties and terms like sum, difference and addend.  

Second grade students can focus on composing and decomposing teen numbers that week also using the commutative and associative properties and terms like sum, difference and addend.  

Second grade may also opt to focus on 1.6 Measurement of lengths and 1.8 Division of shapes into parts.  Teachers can have students determine which attributes of the vegetables to measure to determine which vegetable is the biggest or tallest (weight? circumference?).  Then they can ask students what method and units would be appropriate.  Student can rank the veggies according to whatever attribute they pick.  Once the biggest vegetable is selected, you can discuss how to divide it in half. 

That's it for the primary grades for now.  There are so many other ideas... these are just a few.   Let me know if you've got any to add, and stay tuned for ideas for grades 3-6!