4Real Forums: How many sunflower seeds?

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Living and Loving Numbers
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Topic: How many sunflower seeds?

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Elizabeth
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Real Learning

Joined: Jan 20 2005
Location: Virginia
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Posted: Sept 16 2005 at 7:48am \| IP Logged

We had some fun with our sunflowers yesterday. Christian grew absolutely gorgeous sunflowers this year. They were really our only gardening success. We harvested seeds yesterday and cleaned and dried them.Then, I had everybody guess how many there were and recorded all the guesses. Then, I gave each child a pile of seeds and ten dixie cups. They counted ten seeds into each cup. When they were finished, they poured the seeds into an 8 ounce cup, counting by tens until there were a hundred seeds in the cup. Then they couted more into dixie cups, continuing until all the seeds were sorted into dixie cups or 8 ounce cups. I lined up the cups into "columns" according to place value. The stray seeds that didn't go into dixie cups were on the far right. Each child's dixie cups that didn't make it into the 8 ounce cups were to the left of the stray seeds. Then the 8 ounce cups to the left of that, then quart sized jars. We recombined from right to left, making sure there were no more than nine in each column, until we had two quart sized jars, six 8 ounce jars, 7 dixie cups, and six stray seeds. Then, we informed Daddy that we had counted all the sunflower seeds and there 2,676

. Then we roasted and ate them!My big kids (up to 13) enjoyed the activity and the estimating. My middle ones learned a good bit about place value and even my almost 3 yo fully particpated. She can count to ten and that's the only requirement. Usually, we do this activity in October with pumpkin seed.

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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)

Leonie
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Joined: Jan 28 2005
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Posted: Sept 17 2005 at 12:58am \| IP Logged

Elizabeth,

What fun!

We did something similar with mandarins last year. (No,we didn't grow them!).

We estimated how many segments and seeds would be in a mandarin. Then we chekced while eating. And then we averaged the results!

Leonie in Sydney

ALmom
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Joined: May 18 2005
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Posted: Sept 17 2005 at 1:14am \| IP Logged

Elizabeth, Boy that sounds great. It brought back happy homeschool memories when we needed to remember things that have worked. Thanks for sharing it!

One year we played games with Marshmellows using stuff from a Math Your Way book - guessing games using things under and above cups. Boy did the children learn how to add and subtract quickly - they got to eat the Marshmellows when they guessed correctly! Why is it that food works so well with Math? A side note - we also discovered an allergy to corn syrup after all those marshmellows. Oh well.

Janet

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