Act It Out-- Four Sentence Types

This was a fun way to learn the four different types of sentences--declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory. First we learned about each kind, using an illustrated poster to help us remember what each kind was. Then we picked a sentence card and determined which kind of sentence it was, and then read it in the dramatic way described below.

DECLARATIVE

A Declarative sentence declares something. It is a statement. To help my girls remember this, they would use a Southern Belle voice and say, “Well, I declare!” before reading the sentence. They would also use appropriate mannerisms, like fluttering eye lashes and walking with a swing.  They could even wear a shawl or carry a parasol as well.

INTERROGATIVE

An Interrogative sentence is a question. To help my girls understand what this word means, we talked about how in World War II the Nazis would often interrogate their prisoners.  So for these kinds of sentences, my girls had to read the question in a German accent and use a very stern voice, clicking heels together or pointing fingers, etc., using the “z” sound instead of “th” and “V” instead of “W”. For example, they would say “Zis is an interrogatory sentence. Ven vill ve go?”

IMPERATIVE

An Imperative sentence is a command. To help my girls understand what this word means, we talked about how kings and queens would give commands, so with this kind of sentence, they would pretend to be a king or queen and put on a crown, if they wanted, and say their sentence in a commanding voice, beginning with “It is imperative that you do this.”

EXCLAMATORY

An Exclamatory sentence has an exclamation point, so it invites a lot of dramatic gestures and expressions, kind of like in silent movies where they were over dramatic. So for these kinds of sentences, the girls were encouraged to be over dramatic in their gestures and expressions and voice like they are on stage. They could even faint at the end.

Sentence Cards

Print out examples of the four different sentence types on cards. Then, after you have learned about them, pick a card, decide what sentence type it is, then act it out as described above.

Here are some sentences we used.

When can we eat?

Can we have ice cream?

Do you like green eggs and ham?

Oh, where is my hairbrush?

Why is your hair purple?

Can we play now?

Look at this stuff!

Your face is frightening the baby!
My shoe is on fire!
We’re on the wrong planet!
The monster is attacking!

I'm so excited!

I had the strangest dream last night.

I can’t get up. I have to finish my dream.

I like to eat apples and bananas.

I wish it was Saturday.

I left my shoe at the park.

No, I do not like to eat fish.

Stuff it in the closet.

Shut the door.

Get me a drink of water.

Tell Daddy to come here.

Don’t tell Lisa.

Hands-On Graphs and Plots

We learned and reviewed different kinds of graphs and plots with this hands-on activity. First, we started with a graphing kit (a bag with the manipulatives and cut outs for the activities). Here is what we did to learn about these graphs and plots:

 Bar Graph

Materials: different colored and lengths of math rods and graph paper.

What we did:The girls created a bar graph by drawing a horizontal line across the bottom portion of their graph paper, and a vertical line along the left side of the graph paper. They had to leave enough room to write the data information. Then they lined up the rods vertically along that line. Then they determined what they wanted their data to be and wrote it on their graph. One daughter taped her  bars on so she could lift the paper.

Broken-Line Graph

Materials: chocolate chips for the points and toothpicks for the lines with large grid graphing paper

What we did: The girls placed their chocolate chips at different points on their graph. Then they connected them with the toothpicks. They could have simply connected them by drawing a line with a pencil. They also chose what their data would be and included it. Then they got to eat the chocolate chips.

Pictograph

Materials: stickers and large-grid graph paper

What we did: The girls were given a sticker sheet with a variety of stickers. They put the same kind of stickers in a row on the graph paper. Because there was a different number of each kind of sticker, the length of each row was different.

Stem and Leaf Plot

Materials: a "stem" and "leaf" cut out of green paper, dice, and markers
What we did: After learning how to make a stem and leaf plot, the girls rolled two dice to get a two-digit number. They wrote the number down, and then did it five more times. Then they wrote all the tens digits on the green stem. Then they glued the leaf to the stem in such a way that they could write the ones on the leaf in the way that you do with a stem and leaf plot on paper.

Box and Whiskers Plot
Materials: rectangle paper, ruler, and markers

What we did: The girls used a ruler to make and label a number line by tens from 0-100. Then we learned where to place dots when making this kind of plot. You are dividing a list of numbers in four parts. You first have to line them up from smallest to largest. Then you make a dot below the number line under the smallest of those numbers and another one below the largest one. Then you have to make another dot exactly under the middle point, which you find by finding the median of the numbers. Then you put a dot below the middle point between the middle dot and the dots on each end. To do that you have to find the median number between the numbers represented by those dots. After the girls did that, then they learned how to make a "whisker" by connecting the two dots on each side, and how to draw a box around the dot in the middle. Then I let them decorate them by adding more whiskers and making a face in the box.

Scatter Plot

Materials: frosting decorator dots and paper
What we did: The girls scattered a few decorator frosting dots on graph paper to represent the scattered dots in a scatter plot. Then we talked about what kind of data might be represented on a scatter plot. Then the girls got to eat the decorator dots.

Circle Graph
Materials: White 4" paper circles, Pie-shaped pieces of different colored paper cut from 4" circles

What we did: The girls chose which colored pieces they wanted to glue onto their white circle so the "pie" was completely covered and showed different colored sections. Then they labeled the sections to represent the kind of data that might be included in a circle graph.

Run, Jump or Dig -- Ordered Pairs On a Graph

To help remember which way ordered pairs go on a graph
We used a race analogy. When you run a race you have to run on the ground -- or the horizontal line. The starting point of the race is the Zero on the horizontal line (X axis). At the beginning of the race they give you a card with two numbers (or ordered pair of numbers). The first number that tells you how far to run from the starting point of zero. If it is a positive number then you run forward that many blocks or steps until you reach that first number. If it is a negative number, you run backward that many blocks or steps. The second number on the cad represents where to claim your prize. If it is a positive number you will jump up to get your prize. Each prize is located at that specific number, so you have to jump up to get the prize at the exact spot or number of the second number on your card. If the second number is negative, the negative symbol is a shovel, and that means you have to dig to get your prize. Again, when you dig you can only have the prize that is at the exact number that is on  your card.  

How to remember which line is the X-axis.
When you find or graph ordered pairs on a graph, you find the first number on the horizontal line (x-axis), just as in the race, you first run to that number on the horizontal line. When you are ready to run the race, they marked the spot you run to with a giant X made of two axes. Those are the X Axes. You will always see them on the ground (horizontal line) when you run a race. Remember that X marks the spot for your prize.

How to remember which line is the Y-axis.
At the beginning of the race, if the first number they give you is Zero (0) then you stay where you are to either jump or dig for your prize. But the prizes on the vertical line are attached to that vertical line (y-axis), and the only prize you get is two axes. Then you ask them, "Why axes?" If you have to dig for your prize on the vertical line they hand you axes to dig with. Again, you ask, "Why axes?" The second number of the ordered pair that you get at the beginning of the race tells you how far away from the Y axis your prize will be, and whether you have to jump or dig to get it. Hopefully that will help you rememer that the vertical line is the Y axis.

Polyhedrons Scramble (Geometry)

For an introduction to polyhedrons I taped one letter of the word to different polyhedrons. Then we dumped them out on the ground and had the girls try to figure out the word. I asked them to tell me what the fancy word for flat shapes was (polygon), so that helped them get the right beginning of the word, since each polyhedron is made up of polygons that are connected.

Verb's Tents (Verb tenses)

 In this activity, we set up Verb's tents. We folded 6 cards over to look like a tent and wrote "past," "present," and "future" on three cards, and did the same on the next three cards.   

Then we added campers. The girls cut out and named/labeled their campers as follows: camper 1: Will, camper 2: had, camper 3: have, camper 4 and 5 joining hands: Will and Have.  Here's how the tent assignments were made.

Will sleeps in the future tents (He will go). The other campers will only sleep in tents that are absolutely perfect. So as we figured out which one they slept in we added "perfect" to the present, past, or future written on the tent. Have (Short for Havenshire) sleeps in the present perfect tent (I have gone). Had (short for Hadley) sleeps in the past perfect tent (He had eaten), and Will and Have both sleep in the future perfect tent (They will have finished by then).

  

The girls cut out another camp leader (Jennifer cut a dolphin, Jessica cut a flower with the sign "ing" attached). Well, this camp is a very progressive camp with a progressive leader (the new camp leaders they cut out) that wakes everyone up by shouting "Wake up! You need a little Zing in your life (saying "ing" instead). This is a progressive camp!" This leader goes up to the perfect tents and wakes them up and makes them use a progressive perfect verb for their tent. She makes them add "ing" onto the end of their verb. For example, for the Future perfect tent, they could say "John will have been going . . ." For the past perfect tent, they could say "He had been staying. . ." For the present perfect tent, they could say "We have been eating..."



Past and Present Participle Verb Popsicles

We created paper popsicles to help us remember past and present participles (popsicles) for verbs. One each popsicle was a flap at the top. For the past participles they wrote the helping verbs under the flap at the top. Then they wrote the correct form of the past tense verb as it would be used with the helping verb (like "smiled" to be used with the helping verb "had"). For the present participle popsicles, there was also a flap to the right of the words where the ending "ing" was written. So for those words, they wrote several present tense verbs and then "ing" under the flap. Then they wrote the appropriate helping verb under the flap at the top (is, are, am, etc.)

  

Finding the area of Circles

In this tasty (and sticky) activity, we began with fruit leather circles bought at the store. Then we lay them out on parchment paper (so they wouldn't stick) and cut them, with scissors, like a pizza into 8 pieces. Then we lay each piece next to each other in opposite directions to create a parallelogram.

Then we measured the base and the height (length and width) of the parallelogram and determined it's area. Then we laid out another circular fruit leather and measured its diameter and determined its radius. Then we learned the formula for finding the area of a circle with this silly illustration of a square pie. After we figured out the area of the uncut circle fruit leather, we compared the area with the area we got when we measured the parallelogram and it was almost the same.

The girls were happy when they got to eat the "fruit" of their labors.

Skip Counting Songs for Seven, Nine, and Twelve

Skip Counting by Seven

Melody: Mary Had a Little Lamb

Seven, fourteen, twenty-one--

Twenty-eight--, thirty-five--

Forty-two and forty-nine,

Counting through the sevens.

Then we jump to fifty-six,

Sixty-three--, seventy--

Seventy-seven, eighty-four,

That's how we count by sevens.

Skip Counting by Nine

Melody: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Nine---- eighteen, twenty-seven
Thirty-six and forty-five--.

Fifty-four and sixty-three--.

Seventy-two and eighty-one--.

Nine----ty, ninety nine, one-

Hundred and eight, now

Aint that fine?

Skip Counting by Twelve
Melody: “O Christmas Tree”

Twelve, twenty-four and thirty-six--,

Then forty-eight and sixty.

Then seventy-two and eighty four--,

Then ninety six, one-hundred eight.

One hundred twen----ty, (12 times 10)

One hundred thir---ty two and then,

It’s 12 times 12 to top the score to get

One hundred forty-four.

Prep Position Freeze Game

Turn on some lively music and move around. When the music stops, you must freeze in a prep position. Then you must tell what your preposition is. A prep position is any position that shows a preposition and includes an object. Here are some examples:

        Under the table

        Over the rug

        On the chair

        Against the wall

        Inside the box

        Beside the piano

        At the door

        With a friend

        Near the bench

Order of Operations song

We had fun learning the order of operations with a song we found online. Here's how it goes.

The Order of Operations

To the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know it”

The order of operations goes like this: (clap clap)

The order of operations goes like this: (clap clap)

The order of operations goes like this: (clap clap)

Parenthesis (arms up and curved in ballet style)

Power, (fisted arms representing power)

Multiply (arms crossed in front)

Divide, (left arm down to side; right arm bent at elbow and straight across chest)

Then you add (bring the left arm up perpendicular to the other to make a plus symbol)

And subtract (take the left arm away)

From left to right (right arm swings to the right)

Left to right! (clap clap)