Counting Creates Connections

The 1st and 4th grade students gathered for an experience in mathematics using handfuls of cubes as learning tools.

Because students in the two grades have different-sized hands, the amount of anything they grab a handful of will always be different. Building on success from last year, 4th grade students welcomed their 1st grade counterparts to use math counting cubes for exploring such questions as how much a handful is and how to quantify and compare the capacity of one’s handful.

Each 4th grader paired up with a 1st grade partner. Teachers demonstrated the assignment by dropping one of their hands crane-style into a large tub of math counting cubes and grabbing as many cubes as possible before removing their hand and emptying its contents onto one side of a plastic tray. Partners repeated the process, then counted their cubes to see how many more a 4th grade hand could grab compared to a 1st grade hand. Fourth graders used the data to create bar and line graphs.

The room was alive with the sounds of laughter and learning as students worked together grabbing, stacking and comparing. Older students helped younger peers quantify the results of their work, and all had fun while reinforcing math skills and building community between grade levels.

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