Magic Number

One thing we started in our room is our Magic Number.  We brainstormed ideas on different ways to make a number: tally marks, addition problems, base-ten blocks, number sentences, etc.  Every couple days, I put a new number on our extra side board.  We started with lower numbers.  Since we had already learned about square numbers, I used a couple of those.  I also used a couple prime numbers since we had been talking about them as well.  When the students finish their work, they may add different ways to name that number.  When we started learning about decimals, our magic number was a decimal.  It was great to see what they came up with!  I can't wait to see what they can do once we get to fractions!  Here is an example of our Magic Number board.  After a few days, the kids decided they wanted to call it our graffiti board: love that idea!

Magic Number 27: I used this because so many kids kept mistakenly  thinking 27 was prime.  Many decided to list 27's factors and realized: nope! Not prime!

It is great to see how much they have improved in their accuracy since we began our graffiti board back in October.  Many are even coming up with their own word problems using the number, and some are even using variables to display the number!  This is one activity that gets them thinking about numbers as soon as they walk in our classroom.  They all can't wait for a chance to show off their ideas!