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Thursday, 1 August 2013

Maths on the beach! 21 June

What do you do when it is the winter solstice  and you would like to introduce multiplication to your class.....you head to the beach!

It was the most perfect day when we loaded up the very excited grade two children for some fun learning! We allowed them some free time to run and play on the beach before we settled down to do some practical work.

In an attempt to explain the concept of the longest night and shortest day and the movement of the earth, we got the children make a shadow marker by burying a stick in the sand. Each group then drew around the shadow of one of their members. We came back and hour later and compared the same childs shadow. Everyone was amazed at how the shadow had moved! It was a very real example the earths rotation, which made it a bit easier for them to understand the difficult concept of the seasons.
 
 
The beach is a wonderful way to introduce grouping. The grade twos had loads of fun grouping themselves firstly and then making groups of sand balls on the beach! It did not take long for everybody to understand the concept, which made the formal application in the classroom so much easier.


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