I love Christmas time in the classroom! There are so many opportunities for authentic learning to take place using unique, yet inexpensive materials. These Christmas ball ornaments definitely fit the bill! Today I am sharing how we used these beautiful ornaments to explore math concepts, but there are so many more ways that they can be used in the classroom…
For this activity, we worked in small groups. Each child had their own small felt board that we often like to use during circle time activities to display the items we are working with…
Small baggies were filled with ornaments. Though these ornaments are shiny and pretty, they are only made of plastic so there is no worry that they will break. Each bag contained only two colors and the children were given the opportunity to pick their own baggie…
We like to estimate a lot in our class. So, to begin our lesson, we asked the children to estimate how many ornaments were in our baggies. The children shouted out their estimates. Then we opened our bags and spread the ornaments out on our board so that we could count them…
After counting the ornaments, we discussed whether there were more or less or the same as the children’s initial estimates…
Next, we worked on making simple patterns with our ornaments. Our younger children worked on creating AB patterns. We encouraged our pre-k children, and others that were ready, to create more elaborate patterns. When all of the children had a simple pattern made, we went around the circle taking turns sharing our pattern out loud…
At the end of our math lesson, we piled all of the ornaments back into a box and set them out for the children to play with for the rest of the day…
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