Six land
I'm a huge fan of Six-land, as proposed by Andrew Jeffrey. It is an imagined land in which things work in base-6. I worked with a group of children from a mix of classes (aged 6-8) and we have been figuring out how the number system works in six-land and also how to measure things.
One of the conversations we had was about how children who lived in six-land, learn how to use their numbers. A child suggested they had counting books... so we made some! Books that count in base-6. One of my favourites was one from a group who counted rocks and other natural things and made their book by photocopying them.
Equivalence game
Stolen from twitter: a game of equivalences using symmetry. Each student places a train of rods and then their partner aimed to place an equivalent train on their own side. I was surprised at how challenging this was for some students.
Representing my famalam
Taking another task from the ATM Cuisenaire material, I asked the children in the class to pick 3 rods; each representing papa bear, mama bear and baby bear from Goldilocks and Three Bears. They were to hide the rods behind their backs and reveal the correct rod for each character as they came up in the story when being read aloud. This was fun. So we then thought about how to represent our own families with the rods. As well as other people outside our family.
Some good estimation and more accurate representations of the rods is happening here. I hope this leads to the children noticing that we can record our play with the rods and keep it for future.
We then listened to this song... (maybe)
https://open.spotify.com/track/6DPrhGVJ1WTZvM9fKptnGe
Rods being used during general free play
Some children raided the rods boxes during their play activities in the classroom. I think it's some sort of ship.
