What looked like a day of fun, was actually a day full of learning in disguise. To celebrate the upcoming spring break, Mrs. Culver’s second grade class had an egg hunt, pizza party, and delicious cupcakes. What the students thought was just a fun time, was really a sharpening of their math skills in real world application.
We began with the egg hunt. Instead of getting all the eggs you can find to keep them in your basket, students had to sort the eggs by color. They were told that there was a certain amount of eggs per color. When they found all the eggs, two multiplication problems and an addition problem later, they knew how many they had all together. The final step was figuring out how many eggs each person could have to keep it fair. We had to divide our total number of Easter eggs by 11 students.
Next came the pizza party. Students were instructed to color in the amount of slices they wanted on a circle on the board. When all the pieces were handed out, students calculated how much pizza they had eaten and how much was remaining.
Finally it was cupcake time. The students noted how beautifully the cupcakes were arranged and were reminded of what an array was. They then calculated how many cupcakes there were based on the array. The day ended with a resounding cry of “Math is EVERYWHERE!”
