I visited Stephanie Merrick’s Kindergarten class at Hamilton Elementary earlier this week, returning the number kit that we had used for our professional development day last week. The students actually cheered when they heard they would be working with the materials again!

I did a short number talk with the students using ten frames. I asked them to identify they number they say and then explain “how” they saw it. For example, for eight

the students took turns explaining that they saw 8 as:

5 and 3 (five across the top and three under)

4 and 4 (students saw this in different ways)

2 less than 10 (if ten frame was full it would be ten and there are two missing)

6 and 2 (seeing the six dots arrangement like on a die and two more)

The students then moved to different part of the classrooms to work with the number materials.

I bought some new dotted dice (0-9) at Collins and like how they connect and extend the thinking we have been doing with dot patterns.

Playing with ten frame puzzles – finding complements for 10.

How many ways can you make 7? One of the girls brought over a book about counting eggs in nests and the gems became eggs!

One of the invitations presented to the students was to think about where they see numbers. A few books were on display to inspire them and I offered up my phone to take some photos as they found numbers in their classroom.

The students found numbers all over their classroom. Just finding them was enough excitement for the first look at this but it would be interesting to follow up with the questions…What are numbers used for? How do numbers help us?

Here is a short video of the students’ photographs:

Slideshow of student’s number photographs

After my visit, I got an email from Stephanie saying that as they left their classroom for recess, the students pointed out all sorts of numbers they noticed around their school. A class of number seekers!

~Janice