#Made4Math - Play Learn Grow

 

It's Monday again and what a week it was!  This week was one of those where I was busy every single day, so the week flew by.  This typically wouldn't be a problem but summertime is already on warp speed after July 4, so add in a busy week and it was on triple time or something.  We're now down to 4 weeks before school starts and my garage looks like I haven't made a dent with regard to moving into my new room.  This week, they will be waxing the floors, so maybe that will force me to start thinking about the first days of school since I won't be able to work in my room.

In case you are new to #Made4Math, it is a weekly blog challenge to share a project or creation for your classroom.  I love reading your posts, so please join in the fun using the hashtag #Made4Math on Twitter, IG, or blogging about your project. 

Here are last week's posts in case you missed them:
@pamjwilson shares a TMC throwback with Mirror, Mirror: Tools for Teacher & Student Learning Reflection

@extraneousroot shares some documents she created to support Building Thinking Classrooms - I really really love her Geometry notebook idea!

I shared a first look at my new classroom 

We would love for you to join in the #Made4Math fun - Post your creations on Twitter, blog, or IG with the hashtag #Made4Math!

Now on to this week's project - Play Table

This week is a continuation of one of last week's projects. In my new classroom, there was a green cartesian plane in the front corner of the room.

My goal in that corner is to bring back my puzzle / play table! If you've never tried having a play table, I urge you right now to go read Sara Van Der Werf's post on why you need one, then go to Sarah Carter's blog to start your Puzzle Collection

When I first saw my new room, the cartesian plane was covered in square cork tiles.  After removing them, you can still see on the photo at the left all of the white foam adhesive squares.  

I asked on Twitter (of course) about how to remove the adhesive without damaging the board and several people suggested Goo Gone.  I happened to have a bottle at home, so I tried it.  

After several hours of using Goo Gone, plastic putty knives, and a LOT of elbow grease, the squares were mostly gone, but due to some residue, the board still isn't fully functional.  However, as you can see in the photo above, it looks a TON better than it did before!  

You can see the table below the board which is where the puzzle of the week will be... the blue bulletin board will host the Mental Math Challenge and I wanted to use the cartesian plane as an area to highlight some weekly tidbits about math...

So I started out thinking about what all I wanted to include.  I knew I really liked the idea of the Math Joke of the week from Sarah Carter's blog but that left me 3 more quadrants to go!  What should I do??

I settled on these 4 topics:

• Math Jokes (See link above)
• Math Fun Facts  (Click to download)
• Math Quotes (Click to download)
• Mathematician of the Week (See link below)

So then I spent time scouring the internet for facts and quotes, dumping them into a Google Doc until I had enough for one each week.  By the time I found enough and then made them into a printable format, I really didn't want to go through all of that for the mathematicians too, but thankfully Nathan Day had already made a set and I was able to go to our local office supply store to print them in color.

Now that I had all of my sets printed, I put them in binders / sheet protectors, hung up some titles and some small command hooks and I'm mostly ready to go!  I still have to title my display, which I think will be Play - Learn - Grow (thanks @pamjwilson for the title idea!)

I still need a few finishing touches, but my play table area is almost done!

Until next week - keep creating and sharing! :)