And if you came in my room, above the bulletin board – from the ceiling down to the bulletin board line, I had all these signs from Key Food. And kids would call my room the “Supermarket Room” – but that’s math. And part of the “Do Now” when they came in sometimes would be, “How much would six cans of peas cost?”
And the kid would say, “How would I know?”
Said, “Look at the signs.”
And they said, “Well, it’s three for a dollar,” and I taught them how to figure out what six cans would cost. And they got to feeling that math and numbers were everywhere.
And then there were other things I did. We had all kinds of different activities. I remember the children would say – every Wednesday, there was some kind of a creative activity with math, such as I’d give them the sales sheet from one of the local department stores, and I would tell them to find out how many three pairs of gloves would cost. And I gave the description directly from that sales sheet, so the children had to actually read and match up the words to find out what one cost and then figure out what three would cost. And it was amazing to me, because the children would say, “Gee, great. We don’t have to do math today.” And they spent the whole period doing math, not realizing that that was math. And that was my chance, really, to help them with the basics: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division
