Mrs. Myers
Bean Counting, Toilet Paper, and Deep Conversations
This week began our official study of division in math. With that, the 4th grade became bean counters, literally. To illustrate the idea of division with and without remainders we played a new game called Leftovers. It involved the actual counting of (dividing) groups of beans. I hope it helps students visualize what is happening when they divide numbers.
For another concrete example we used toilet paper (78 squares of it!) to represent the size of our solar system. "Planets" were then spaced accordingly along the squares to show how far they are from the sun. As we reread Psalm 8:3-4 to go along with our study, a great conversation about Heaven developed. Students asked questions about what it is like, where it is, can we get there and how. Some questions I could answer; some I could not. But the wonderful thing was that they were being asked. The class was wondering, pondering, hypothesizing. This is the heart of classical education.❤️
