Dot Day

I love my teachers... they are always willing to try something new or play along with my ideas even when in true Mrs. Romine fashion, I spring it on them.  This year I heard about Dot Day for the first time.  And so two weeks ago, I sent out an email telling the teachers about International Dot Day with a link to this blog  with some ideas and said if anyone was up for doing an activity to let me know.  Some teachers took it and ran with it, planning activities to do in the classrooms, like these kinder teachers.  For math, they read 10 Black Dots and gave each kid a different number card.  They had to tell the teacher the number and count out the number of dots to make their picture.

a snowman

a car

In Language Arts, they happen to be studying beginning sounds, so the kinder idea from the blog above went perfectly.  Students had a paper with the first initial of their name and had to put dots all on the letter.

My 5th grade teachers departmentalize and one of the math teachers and I collaborated on how to use dots with their objective of two-digit multiplication.  We decided to have the kids make a drawing of two shapes.  It could be abstract shapes, geometrical shapes or 2 "things" that go together.  Some even did their initials. 

Then they had to color around the shapes for their background.  When they finished that, they took a Q-tip with paint and dotted the inside of their 2 shapes.  Then they counted the number of dots in each shape and wrote a multiplication sentence and solved the problem.  Then they made a QR code on the iPad with the answer to the problem. 

Finally they attached the QR code to their drawing and signed their picture.  

Now the pictures are ready to be hung in the 5th grade hallway for a self checking multiplication station.