Use a bear theme to engage your students in a math warm up! This one is ideal if your students have been working on addition and you'd like to see them use their knowledge to identify a good strategy to use. It will also help them begin to learn to add 3 numbers.
Perhaps you can integrate some listening, literacy and language and learn a rhyme before you start:
Bear Math Rhyme
A little brown bear went out walking for some fun,
He found three juicy berries, growing in the sun.
How many did he eat? We’ll have to wait and ask,
He wants you to focus on your math-play task!
Math Warm Up: Bear Adds Three
- use the bear frame, number cards and dot cards from the Math Kit
- shuffle the cards and let students take 3 from a face-down pile
- students find the total - using addition strategies rather than counting from 1
- for example - in the picture below, a student may total the dots (2+1) by subitizing before adding 5+3=8 as a known fact
- another student may quickly total 5 and 2 - 7 and then 7 and one more - 8 (count-on one strategy)
- this is a slower paced math warm up with a focus on math talk and discussing different addition strategies to find the total of 3 numbers
- it could be best for your group to all focus on the one bear mat that you have as the teacher and work together to listen and suggest strategies before they attempt it independently
After the math warm up you can teach an addition mini lesson. To follow up on another day or at the end of your math session, why not draw a bear math picture (for listening too).
Draw a Bear Walk math picture:
- students draw as they listen to the math story
- at the end of their drawing and your story they will count the berries (dots or circles) they have drawn - perhaps using some of the addition strategies you've explored together
The bears have been in a deep sleep, hibernating during the winter. It is time for them to wake up. It is spring and they will emerge to see plants beginning to grow leaves. The bears will be on a feeding frenzy. Let’s draw some berries they have found.
- Give instructions for students to draw berries in small batches - e.g. let’s draw 4 berries, now bear will keep walking to find more, let’s draw another 5 berries.
- Keep this going and have students draw berries along the path on their page.
- At the end of the story, have your students total the berries, looking for ways to easily add them (addition strategies) - for example they might find 6 and 4 remember that this makes ten.
I hope your students have fun with the bears at your math table!
- find the bear cards here
- find the Math Kit bundle here
- find some math bear tracing number pages here