For the past few weeks, my enrichment math club has been working on a big ice cream-related project. I'm so glad it's finished, because now I can post their fabulous work! My math club meets once per six-day rotation, so it took us three weeks to finish this project. I have eighteen students in math club, so I split the group in half--that makes it feel like this project took even longer since I did each component twice!
The first week, I told the students that I used to work at Ben & Jerry's (true story!) and that I had decided to open up my own first grade ice cream shop. I hired them all to work in my shop. We used the interactive white board to take orders from "customers" and total up the cost of each order. I downloaded a flipchart from Promethean Planet to do this part. I'm not sure if I can upload a flipchart on here, but if you go to
www.prometheanplanet.com (you need an account) and search for "Flavor Fiesta" in the math resources you should find it. I tweaked it a little to make the formatting fit my computer, and I added infinity coins at the bottom of each page (the students can drag the coins into the margin to help them total up the order, and the coins keep regenerating!) Here are some screen shots of the flipchart:
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| This was our final activity... keep reading! |
The second time we met, I let the students get creative and invent their own sundae. I displayed our ice cream shop menu, and when they were finished creating they had to total up the cost of their sundaes. Here is the sheet we used to design our sundaes:
Ice cream
And here is one sundae that a student drew. I have such great artists in my math club! I wish I could post all of their sundaes!
Finally, on the last day of the project, the students made 3D models of their sundaes. Honestly, I was terrified that this was going to turn into total chaos. My tiny classroom has space for eight students, so my groups usually meet next door in the spacious computer lab. Since this project involved hole punchers and hot glue, I decided to let my first group sit at my table in an effort to contain the mess. Plus, I didn't want to leave the hot glue gun unattended. To my utter delight, I managed to execute this activity without a hitch! Two days later, when it was the second group's turn, I took them into the lab (I had to add a student to this group, so there weren't enough chairs in my room). Again, to my surprise, the lesson went well! No chaos! No hot glue burns! No tiny paper holes scattered across the computer lab carpet! Here are some pictures of the final products:
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| I cut styrofoam bowls in half and pre-glued them to the paper. |
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| This is the 3D version of the hand-drawn sundae I posted above. They're almost identical! |
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| We used tissue paper for ice cream, yarn for syrup, paper "holes" for sprinkles, and polyester pillow filling for whipped cream. |
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| I manned the hot-glue gun, and I glued the tissue and polyester if the students asked for assistance. Most of them did the whole thing with good old white glue! |
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| She had drawn three lemons on top of her sundae, so she made lemons out of yellow paper. Cute! |
And here is a picture of the adorable display outside my room:
