Camp Number Sense

Wow!! What a great couple of days it has been in our classroom! We have begun Camp Number sense!

Number sense is such a vital math skill and one that needs to be focused on and insured that the students are able to perform with fluency! If they do not get these skills during the foundational years then they will have great difficulty mastering the math expectations in the later years.

The Common Core State Standards in Math in First Grade focus a lot on Number sense. So the idea of Camp Number Sense was born. The students will participate for two weeks in camp activities concentrated on Number sense. These CCSS will be the focus of our activities.

Campers will follow the following agenda:
Their camp days will be filled this week with:
Potato sack Number line: Mon and Tues, students will roll a 10 sided die and jump in potato sacks down a number line. They will have math discussions over which numbers are greater and less than and how do they know as well as what number comes before and after the number they jumped to. I created my number line using a long piece of burlap I found at Walmart for $3.49, red and blue plastic plates also from Walmart (a pack of 50 for $4.88) and numbers from Creative Teaching Press! The sacks were $1.00 at Tractor Supply.

The kids loved this activity!

  


On Wed and Thursday, they will be jumping and creating number sentences!

Math with their Math Counselor (Me) was fun. They worked on number lines and starting at a number and getting to a number. We did story problems about camp. For example if we start with 6 marshmallows and we get 8 more how many marshmallows all together or if we start at rock number 6 and we jump in our sack forward 6 more rocks where are we? The kids loved manipulating their number lines and writing their number sentences! Some groups used +Mike Pecci  @weveel @scentos and created their own number lines! We also manipulated our giant classroom number line!

 

They love their scentos!!!!!! Here is a video of the potato sack number line:

Tech by the fire is another area they loved to visit during Camp Number Sense this week! They got to sit by the campfire and use the chrome books! They were on the websites abcya.com and dreambox! I made the campfire by taking sticks and tying them together at the top with wire. I place rocks in a circle and place the sticks in the middle so they rested against the rocks. I then added red christmas lights as the flames! Plugged them in and voila an awesome campfire!

Spotlight on the Number is an activity that the campers got to focus on a number and represent it on the camp themed paper. They were to represent it using number bonds, ten frames, number sentence, tally marks, picture, word, tens and ones, domino and number line! They did this by lantern light! They loved the lantern!

The bonus area for those campers who were just having a tremendous experience at Camp Number sense was the Osmo! This is an amazing technological tool. It attaches to the IPad and it watches the moves the kids make and lets them know if they are placing the tangrams correctly to create the object. To check it out please click here and go to their webpage!

The kids brought in bandanas and hats to wear during the camp but due to the high temperatures at camp, they were not worn for long! The camp schedule is monday through Thursday for campers and monday through Friday for the Math Counselors. There is a mandatory camp training program all day on Friday! (a professional development day for teachers)

Camp will resume next week with new activities! Please come back next week to see the activties and then again on Friday to see the highlights from Camp Number Sense Family Day! More details to come!

Before the post ends, please check out the awesome camp counselor shirts we had made from Vistaprint! Groupons sure come in handy! LOL!!!

eek 2 of Camp Number Sense will be blogged about next week! Please come back and see what our math campers will be doing to enhance their number sense skills at Camp Number Sense!!!