Between a snow day on Monday and an anticipated snow day on Wednesday (that came true!) I knew my students were going to be a bit of an itch on Tuesday.
We got some of our "business" out of the way, February Spelling Pre-Tests, working on our recycling project in Reader's and Writer's workshop etc. but the last thing I wanted to do was really jump head first into our new unit on fractions when I knew their heads weren't 150% in the game.
It was also time to update our New Year's Resolution bulletin board, so Monday night I decided we were going to do Chocolate fractions as an introductory/exploratory lesson....and to help spiff up our bulletin board.
I was super excited over break when I stumbled across some really cute borders in the clearance section of Walmart. I scooped up a ton of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and Valentine's Day border trim for 50 cents! So now I had my border trim, what to put on the board?
Thinking of boxes of chocolate obviously made my mind wander to one of my favorite movies--Forrest Gump.
"Life is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get!"
I quickly put together a packet for my students (get yours here!!) that introduced them to fraction vocab like "numerator" and "denominator" (and was full of cute graphics from http://www.mycutegraphics.com/).
The packet asks students to fill a heart shaped candy box with as few as 4 or as many as 12 chocolates. Then determine the fraction of uneaten and the fraction of eaten chocolates. Making sure that when they add the two fractions together...they should have a whole box of chocolates.
I created a tracer to cut out the hearts, and asked two students to use it to make a few extra tracers. They sat with me at the reading table while the rest of my students unpacked and settled into their morning routine. While they were tracing and cutting I was assembling my example piece. They started questioning why we were making a Valentine's Day craft when we hadn't "filled our bucket" and earned a class Valentine's Day treat yet. I told them they were learn more later in the morning but it was to be our first math lesson on fractions. They excitedly continued cutting and talking about how this was SO much better than just doing a worksheet...and how much they love my class.
The quick intro lesson and craft took about an hour and a half. We spent about an hour in the morning, then finished the last bit after lunch. The kids took great pride in decorating their candy boxes.
In the TPT packet you will find directions for your students on how to assemble their candy boxes, example photos, a worksheet for students to determine the fractions of chocolates eaten/uneaten, labels for their candy boxes, chocolate clip art, candy wrapper clip art, and clip art to decorate their candy boxes.
--I also let my kiddos decorate with some sequins!--
In the end we made it through our introductory fraction lesson, listened to some great Disney Pandora, and we have a super cute Valentine's Day bulletin board that cost all of 50cents!
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