Happy Halloween!

This morning we did some spooky Halloween math involving number clues and place value. Most of us found this an easy peasy review! One thing that we had troubles with was an activity based around rounding numbers to the nearest 10s or 100s. We worked through these steps:

For rounding to the nearest 10:
a) Figure out which tens the number appears between. For example 84 comes between 80 and 90. Using a hundreds chart really helps with this!
b) Look at the digit in the ones place. If it is 1-4 you round down. If it is 5-9 you round up. So for 84 we would round down to 80.

Even if I have a number in the hundreds, thousands, ten thousands etc I should only focus on the digits in the tens and ones place. For example if I have 5434 I would start my steps focusing on the 34. 34 comes between 30 and 40. Since there is a 4 in the ones place I round down to 30. Once I'm done these steps I can add back in my thousands and hundreds digits to realize that rounding 5434 to the nearest ten would be 5430.

For rounding to the nearest 100:
a) Figure out what hundreds the number appears between. For example, 745 comes between 700 and 800.
b) Look at the digits in the tens and the ones place. If it is 1-49 you round down and if it is 50-99 you round up. For 745 I would look at the 45 and round down to 700.

Again if I have a number in the thousands I would focus first on hundreds place. For example with 3886 I would focus on the 886. 886 comes between 800 and 900. Then I can focus on the numbers in the tens and ones place. For 86 I would round up to 900. So to round 3886 to the nearest hundred I would do 3900.

Try practicing these questions and bring your answer in tomorrow!!
1) Round to the nearest 10:
- 56
- 732
- 1749

2) Round to the nearest 100:
- 78
- 622
- 7877

We began to work on writing scary stories. We first had to plan our setting, characters, obstacle our hero would face, attempts made to solve the problem and the beginning, middle and end. Once we completed our plans we began to write. In case we were stuck with ideas, there were story cubes that were made for each section of our plan. We could roll the cube and get an idea to keep the writing process going. We will continue to work on our stories tomorrow.

To wrap up our discussion around Halloween and Day of the dead, we began watching the movie the Book of Life this afternoon. It was interesting to see the different interpretations of the day of the dead and we compared it to what we learned in the Halloween Tree as well as how we celebrate Halloween.

Reminders:
- We have library tomorrow! Please bring back your books
- Numerous items were sent home today including math and spelling tests. Please review with your child. Questions from the test would be great review especially if your child did not complete or pass the assignment.