Dandelion Math

I decided to make the most of what we have going for us outside at school, and right now it is dandelions!  I made this bulletin board, because I loved the saying:

"When you look at a field of dandelions, you can either see a hundred weeds, or a hundred wishes."

Of course we have to start off the Dandelion Day by reading Dandelion by Don Freeman.

This is always a great book to help children remember that it is best to be exactly who you are. 

We illustrated this poem below, and had a great conversations about the way the dandelion flower is described as a real lion. It is a great poem for description.   It isn't "personification," I guess- because it is a lion- maybe we could make up a new term called "animalification."  There you go!  Anyway, the children thought it was fun! (OK- I just looked it up- and on Urban Dictionary, "animalification" is a real thing! :)

During our computer time, I have only half of the class for about 25 minutes.  This is a perfect time to do so many things with a smaller group.  Wednesday was a gorgeous day, and we had only about ten minutes left before we picked up the rest of the class.  I decided to take the children outside to count dandelions!  We had a ball.  I did say a little prayer the night before that the custodians hadn't mowed that field earlier in the day- and my prayer was answered!

Ahhh!

We got busy! Our job was to pick groups of 10 dandelions and line them up, so that we could see how many we could pick in ten minutes.  After the groups were picked, we would count them by tens.

 Our finished product:   350 dandelions!





It was also May Day on Wednesday, so some lucky moms were going to have some lovely bouquets in May baskets at home after school.  :)

All good things have to come to an end, and the field was mowed later that afternoon.  The other half of my class will get to go outside for Dandelions Part 2:  The Wish Flowers...

Thank you for visiting!  I hope all of your wishes come true! :)

Carolyn