Standards:

• K.1.1.1 Numbers and Operations: Understand the relationship between quantities and whole numbers up to 31.
  • Benchmark: Recognize that a number can be used to represent how many objects are in a set or to represent the position of an object in a sequence.
• K.1.2.1 Number and Operation: Use objects and pictures to represent situations involving combining and separating.
  • Benchmark: Use objects and draw pictures to find the sums and differences of numbers between 0 and 10.

Rationale: The purpose of this activity is to allow the student to collaborate with their table/small groups and practice sorting jungle animals based on different characteristics. The students will then be counting and identifying how many animals are in each group by a number, which their group will write down on either a piece of paper or a whiteboard. The students will get practice in sorting and correlating objects with a number which fits in with the first standard. Once they sort animals by 2 characteristics (stripes and spots, Etc.) they will then work together and count/add up all of the animals that are on the place mat after sorting and identifying how many animals are in each group. After all of the teacher directed categories are gone through, the students will get the opportunity to look at the animals they have, and try to come up with their own categories for sorting. This provides a little inquiry along with teacher directed, utilizing jungle animals as a manipulative.

Materials:

Place mats X2

Sorting labels (stripes, spots, grey, yellow, big, small)

Recording Sheet

Pencil

Interactive smartboard or doc cam to display examples

Jungle animals

Groups

Motivation:

Hello my friends! We have been talking a lot about our jungle animals lately. I have a question for you! Do all jungle animals look the same? Why or why not? What makes these animals unique/different from each other? These are called characteristics. That is a big word, but you are all so smart that I know you can handle it. Teacher will explain what a characteristic is using herself as an example. (I have blonde hair, I have blue eyes, I have long hair, etc.) Teacher will then display 2 different animals on the board and ask students what some of their characteristics are. Exactly, you are all becoming masters at finding characteristics that makes them special! Well today, I am going to give you many different animals to look at, and we are going to practice sorting your animals based on some characteristics and then counting how many there are!

Activity Procedure:

1. To begin the lesson, hand out place mats, jungle animals, and sorting labels to the groups. Allow a minute of brief discussion on what kinds of characteristics they see in their animals. Each group will get the opportunity to share one of their characteristics they see.
2. The teacher will model how the activity will take place either by using a doc cam/interactive board so the students are able to see how the sorting process takes place.
3. The students are directed to take out the stripes and spots labels and place them above the place mats.
4. As a group, the students will begin sorting the animals based on their characteristics. Once the animals are sorted by the groups, they will need to take out their first answer sheet. With the guidance of the teacher, the students will record their answers by counting how many animals are in each section. Once they have that, the students will then have to count all of the animals to see how many animals there are total with patterns. They will be able to draw a picture on the answer sheet if time allows showing how they figured it out.

5. The students will go through the same process sorting the animals based on their color (grey or yellow) and their size (big or small).

6. If time allows, the children will be able to utilize their group members and collaborate on any other possible characteristics they could group their animals by. This provides a little bit of inquiry to allow the students use what they learned and identify characteristics.

The idea was found while searching pinterest. The place mats/labels and recording sheets were all created by me.