Bones for Base Ten

We've had a busy past couple of weeks in first grade. Last week, we visited the Corn Maze for a field trip. It just so happened to be on my birthday (October 24th) and the kids were convinced that's why we were going. It was a lot of fun and they enjoyed seeing animals, getting lost in the maze, and decorating their own pumpkins.

This week, we've been busy doing a variety of activities. In math, we're pulling all of our recent place value lessons together. On Monday, I pulled out a new activity for the kids that they simply loved! I heard a lot of "This was fun." when we finished the activity. It was such an easy lesson to plan that I was surprised by how much they loved it!

The first thing I did was create bones of various sizes on the computer. (I'll be uploading these to TPT soon for those who don't want to create their own.) Then, I printed them on cardstock and had them laminated. The largest of the bone had to be taped together after lamination because it spanned two pages.

Next, I set each bone (several of each) on a table. There were five different bones. I gave them each a number. Then, the students used their recording sheet and went to a table. They used base ten blocks to "measure" the bone. They wrote down how many tens and ones it took to go from tip to tip. Then, they had to write the expanded form of the number and draw a picture of the blocks.

 

This lesson could easily be adapted to other objects as well. We haven't covered measuring yet, but I felt this was a good way to pull it into our lesson just a tiny bit.