Great math problem!

So yesterday we said GOODBYE to winter! I walked around the circle with a big black trashbag telling the kids allllllllll the things I would miss about winter. Then, I said the thing I would miss the most is snowball fights and unleashed all of my paper snowballs on them! You can guess what ensued----FUN! Then we cleaned up, of course.

I told them that tomorrow (today) we would use our snowballs in a math problem. So we did. It's up above. I split the kids up into 3 groups. Then I wrote the problem with them.

It was really funny to watch them. Many of the kids just counted by 2's or 1's and got it immediately. I knew I had to make it harder.
So I added this: Prove it and explain your thinking

 

The groups each got a big piece of paper and got to work. Two groups worked together and in one group all of the children represented their individual thinking.

The group up above will be added to our How Did You Do It wall...because they thought to record some of their explanation with words. That's an interesting way, isn't it?

I snapped a picture of Devan's whiteboard. Look how he drew 1 circle to represent each person in the group. Then he drew the 2 circle below it to represent the snowballs. Some kids will need to represent the people and others will not.

Here is Bryson's work. Simple and straight to the point. This little guy has unbelievable place value knowledge. It makes me think that tomorrow I should split into groups again and give each group different numbers to work with (and maybe no snowballs). Sorry, I'm planning outloud.

Here's Katie's work! She represented each person by writing the first few letters in their name.

Gabi recorded a number on top of each circle. She counted by 1's. I'm so impressed that they really have grapsed that counting carefully is SUPER important!
Jorgia counted by 2's and represented each group with a person's name next to it.