Look At All Those Balloons!

(Note:  This is the post that was deleted last week)

Happy weekend!

Sorry for the late post everyone.  I misplaced my camera and had no pictures to help explain the students ideas, but I finally found it on Friday!

So, the students had been racking their  brains about these balloons left over from our 100th Day of School party.  They knew they wanted to try and keep the 100 balloons up in the air but were unsure of how they would be able to do it.  The class took to their journals and documented some strategies that they would try to do during this challenge.

In order to put our theories to the test, the students felt it was important that the classroom be safety proofed before hand.  They were concerned about the balloons popping if they landed on any sharp items, such as the pencils or scissors.  While they went out to lunch, I moved as much of the classroom around to avoid any such items to pop the balloons, and give the friends more room to test their theories.  I then pushed out the 100 balloons to the center of the room and the students went right to work, trying as hard as they could to get all 100 balloons up into the air!

In the end, the children were unable to get all of them up in the air at the same time (which is okay!).  They came to the conclusion that it did not work out because there were only 20 students and 100 balloons--- they were outnumbered!  They recognized that they either needed more people to help or less balloons to work with.

Speaking of less balloons, during out test, we had a few balloons pop!  The class had a fun time finding the new total after each balloon popped, by counting backwards.  In the end, 5 balloons popped for various reasons, even though we had removed any sharp objects from our work space! Our new total is 95 balloons.

Now that we have tested our theory, the students have already jumped to the next step which is deciding:  What do we do with them now!?  The class generated a brainstorm of different possibilities for friends to consider.

But before we can decide WHAT to do with them, the class is faced with a new division problem:  If we have 95 balloons and 20 friends in our class, how many balloons will each friend be able to use for their idea?  This is something the students will be working on in the following days.

In other news, it's always fun to start the end of our week with our 8th Grade Buddies.  This special time together is something the kids look forward to every Friday! We were able to enjoy the great weather and have a Walk and Talk to the park.

 Love, Gaby