Two Much Fun: Dr. Seuss Week- One Fish, Two Fish, Rainbow Goldfish Math Activities

Monday, March 3, 2014

Dr. Seuss Week- One Fish, Two Fish, Rainbow Goldfish Math Activities

(4 Years)

Flashback to 2013! Last year, we played with Rainbow Goldfish and practiced graphing using One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (see here). Look how little they were!

This is a great excuse to play with your food! It's a quick, two-step, activity: (1) print and (2) pour Rainbow Goldfish. That's it! You can get our free printable here.

They were so excited that we were going to be munching on Goldfish while working. As a teacher, I used to love going to Lunch and Learns also- there's something about snacking and working that go so well together.

Once again, Little Miss decided to work on placing all of the red fish first, while Wild One looks over at her paper every few minutes. It's funny how some things don't change.

While they were working. I asked: which column has the most Goldfish? least? looking at the number line, how many red Goldfish do you have? yellow? orange? green?

After we finished our graphs. We worked on addition and learning the associated math vocabulary (plus, and, equals, altogether, same as). I asked Wild One to place some Goldfish in the left rectangle, then again in the middle rectangle. He then began to count, using his finger to touch each fish. Two plus three equals. Then he counted them altogether. Five! He began pulling out five Goldfish for the last rectangle. After he had all five out. I asked him to line them up in a column. Then we lined up the addends on the left side of the equal sign. A connection was made! He said, Look they are the same! Yay, he saw that five = five! He also saw that 2 + 3 and 3 + 2 = 5! Thank you Goldfish people!

Meanwhile, Little Miss was practicing her patterning. She decided on a simple AB pattern. As she was lining them up, she started grinning and began altering her pattern into a wave design (as if the fish were swimming). I love their imaginations!