I have been doing this activity for the past three years as part of my 100th day celebration and it has been a huge success! About two weeks before the 100th day of school I pose a challenge to my class. We will try to collect 100 cans of food for the local food pantry. We discuss the importance of helping the food pantry and the kids get very excited to help. As the students bring in their canned goods, we count them. To reinforce the place-value concept, we put groups of 10 in a shopping bag so that we can count them by 10s in the future. We then place 10 bags in a box. Single cans are counted by 1s of course. This provides a second dose of place value practice each day which is always a good thing! We also write the number on the board. If you were doing this with older children, you could even have them complete the subtraction problem each day to see how many cans were brought in that day.
After we have many cans, we talk about how the food pantry will need to sort all the items so that they will be able to find what they are looking for. We then practice sorting the cans into food groups. This gives us a realistic application for sorting and I love realistic applications!!!!
On the 100th day of school, we do a final count of the cans and then bag them up for my husband and I to drop off at the food pantry. The volunteers there always tell me how grateful they are as after the holidays most people forget about the food pantry and they are running low come February.
I love this activity as it teaches so many great mathematical concepts as well as important social concepts. The children are always so excited to help others. There has never been a year that we have not surpassed the goal of 100 cans. Last year we had 148!!! I also love the fact that this project supports a local charity. We donate to Manna on Main Street in Lansdale, PA each year. I highly suggest finding your local food pantry and consider doing this project with your class.
http://mannaonmain.org/
Friday, October 5, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Super Teacher Moment 1
I apologize for taking so long to get this up, but I had a 3 week old with a cold this week. Needless to say, sleep has been elusive!
This past year I was very excited about my pizza lesson. Teaching a half day kindergarten can make it tough to get everything in, so I am always looking for ways to integrate and this lesson allowed me to do just that and boy was it fun! We were reading a theme about food in language arts and finishing our science unit about the five senses. I decided to read the book called "Hold the Anchovies" which is part of our program and focuses on asking questions before reading a nonfiction text. We asked questions about how pizza was made before we read and found the answers in the book. For the questions the book did not answer, we did further research on the Internet. I then had my students make mini bagel pizzas. Each child put one teaspoon of sauce on half a small bagel, added two teaspoons of cheese and if they wished topped their pizza with one pepperoni. I then broiled the pizzas in my toaster oven for about 3 minutes. Before eating, we talked about what the pizza smelled like, looked like and felt like. After eating, we described what it tasted like. Finally, we talked about how we could remember how to make the pizzas again. (I am always on the look out for realistic writing activities.) As a class, we completed a shared writing of the recipe being sure we included each step and a title. When we were complete, I typed up the recipe and sent it home with each child. While it did cost me $23 to make one mini pizza for each of my 43 students, it was well worth it and the kids talked about it for days! The number of skills we worked on and the lasting impact they had was quite evident and exciting to watch. Many parents and students told me that they made the pizzas at home and that the kindergartners helped read their recipes (while most of it was most likely memory, it reinforced the importance of writing) as they made dinner with their parents. What a rewarding lesson!
This past year I was very excited about my pizza lesson. Teaching a half day kindergarten can make it tough to get everything in, so I am always looking for ways to integrate and this lesson allowed me to do just that and boy was it fun! We were reading a theme about food in language arts and finishing our science unit about the five senses. I decided to read the book called "Hold the Anchovies" which is part of our program and focuses on asking questions before reading a nonfiction text. We asked questions about how pizza was made before we read and found the answers in the book. For the questions the book did not answer, we did further research on the Internet. I then had my students make mini bagel pizzas. Each child put one teaspoon of sauce on half a small bagel, added two teaspoons of cheese and if they wished topped their pizza with one pepperoni. I then broiled the pizzas in my toaster oven for about 3 minutes. Before eating, we talked about what the pizza smelled like, looked like and felt like. After eating, we described what it tasted like. Finally, we talked about how we could remember how to make the pizzas again. (I am always on the look out for realistic writing activities.) As a class, we completed a shared writing of the recipe being sure we included each step and a title. When we were complete, I typed up the recipe and sent it home with each child. While it did cost me $23 to make one mini pizza for each of my 43 students, it was well worth it and the kids talked about it for days! The number of skills we worked on and the lasting impact they had was quite evident and exciting to watch. Many parents and students told me that they made the pizzas at home and that the kindergartners helped read their recipes (while most of it was most likely memory, it reinforced the importance of writing) as they made dinner with their parents. What a rewarding lesson!
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