On the first day of our Meeting for Learning (Math Workshop) activity this week we used gumdrops and toothpicks as building materials. Our challenge was to construct a shape horizontally and then continue building vertically beginning with 10 gumdrops.
Many kindergartners practiced making three-gumdrop triangles and four-gumdrop squares. Some children found ways of attaching different shapes to each other. In some cases building vertically was not intuitive and it took problem-solving with a friend to figure it out.
On the second day, we recorded the number of each color gumdrop in our gumdrop constructions and sketched our pieces. We noticed that wherever there were triangles, there were 3 gumdrops and three toothpicks. We noticed that wherever there were squares, there were 4 gumdrops and 4 toothpicks.
(More photos from our activity are in the "Kindergarten Favorites" slide show.)
