Hot Cocoa Math

 I want to share with you part of my Winter Wonderland Math and Language Arts Unit that has a section all about hot cocoa!

It's fun any time you can make math hands on and exciting for the students.  The kids had a wonderful time using marshmallows as math manipulatives.  We are studying numbers 11-20.  The students made a mug out of construction paper and were allowed to glue down marshmallows to display any number between 11-15.

We made a hot chocolate craftivity to practice counting!

After we made our hot chocolate craft, we glued down some marshmallows.

The students counted the marsmallows in their chocolate and wrote the number on the line!

The next part of our lesson, we used our 5 senses to taste and investigate hot chocolate.  After we tasted our cocoa, we graphed our opinion if we liked the taste or not.

This chapter we are learning to count to 20 using 10 Frames.  I decided to use the previous cocoa mugs, to make a center station practicing showing sets of numbers 11-20.  The students chose a mat, and then placed marshmallows in the 10 frame to show the number on the mug.

Click on the picture to download the craft and updated 10 frame mats!

I try to post the objective and standards on each bulletin board, so parents and administration know what we are working on in class.  Here is what is posted around this board:

Hot Cocoa Math

Objective:  In math, we are focusing on numbers 11-15.  We are practicing counting and writing these numbers.  The students were able to choose how many (between 11-15) marshmallows that they wanted to glue onto their cup of hot cocoa.  We also used our sense of taste to take a sip of hot cocoa to see if we liked it.  Then we graphed if we did or did not like the taste of hot cocoa.  The following standards were addressed:

Math: Number Sense

1.2  Count, recognize, represent, name and order a number of objects (up to 30)

Statistics, Data Analysis, and Probability

1.1  Pose information questions, collect data, and record using graphs

Science: Investigation and Experimentation

4.0   Observe common objects by using the 5 senses: taste, smell