Hooray for Arrays! Building Arrays Work Mats for Math Centers

Hooray for arrays and for second graders feeling like third graders doing multiplication and division! 

We like candy math in our room as you may remember from my other posts!

  Tomorrow we are building arrays with m&m's! 

Each student will build an array of their choice on their mat. Then we will number our spiral notebooks, stand up and scoot around to 10 desks that look as if they have an array that isn't already recorded. The class will have to write the repeated addition sentence and the multiplication sentence that each array shows. I will roam the room and be sure they are on track!

We did a similar activity yesterday when I introduced the concept for the first time. I just asked the class to make an array on their desk that shows objects in rows and columns. There were some blank stares and some who already knew what to do. This was wonderful for assessing where each of them were with prior knowledge.

Afterward, we took a gallery walk and looked at all of them. We had a great discussion about which arrays were correct and which were not good examples and why. We also had a quality number talk about the ways in which an array is like (or not like) fractions (as a way to introduce division concepts). 

I know it's not February, so please excuse the candy hearts, but it's all that I had enough of at the time. The kids didn't seem to mind revisiting Valentine fun. My little sweethearts know teacher keeps candy counters of all kinds as manipulatives! We never eat them, of course! 

After building the m&m's arrays, the kids will each get to visit the bingo marker station that is set up to dot up their own colorful array project to take home!

You can get a copy of the workmat and bingo page here.

:)