The Napping House

There is a book called, "The Napping House" with many learning opportunities for the pirate crew!  We started with me reading the story and asking the crew to think about the characters in the story and tell me how many feet they had combined.  They went to work right away trying to mentally solve the problem.  I listed ALL their answers on the board and as it turns out none were correct, but I didn't tell them that.  Instead, I sent them off to prove their answers.  They could choose to work independently, in pairs, or larger groups, but they had to use a strategy other than "mental math."

Some of the crew decided they liked the strategy of drawing pictures whether it was the actual

characters OR drawing symbols to represent the number of feet.

This strategy was lining up counters like a graph showing how many feet 

each character had.

The equation works!

Then they ALL got to share their thinking and GUESS WHAT?  ALL of them came up with a different answer than they did solving the problem mentally.  They solved the challenge using multiple different strategies which helped us learn from each other.

Then the challenge changed! Next they learned how to make an origami house, draw their own family including pets, and figure out how many feet are in their own family.

The crew then took their total number of feet and lined themselves up in order perfectly!

During reading they used the cut out characters they made to practice retelling the story, 

"The Napping House."

They are loving their retelling ropes that stay in their personal reading bags.

I loved walking around and listening to them retell me the story with

confidence using the characters!

The next day each pirate got to choose a number and they could figure out

multiple families that might have that many feet living in the house!  They got pretty 

creative drawing peg leg pirates, animals, and aliens to create equations.  I think they

ALL grew as mathematicians using such a great book!

In reading the next day we read, "Full Moon at the Napping House" which is

 the author's newest story.  It gave us the perfect chance to create

a Venn Diagram so that we could compare and contrast the stories! 

The new book is definitely awesome and another crew favorite!