Teaching About Numbers And Grouping

We continue to interweave numbers into our pe class. This week we counted our jumping jacks and other exercises. First we would count how many jumping jacks we performed. We would ask the question, "What are we counting?" The typical response was, "Numbers." We would then explain that we are counting the number of jumping jacks in a set. We gave the kids our explanation of what a set is and how we group our exercises. Then we would do another  "set". This time we would count by 2's or 5's. For example we would count up to 50 by 5's. We explained how this is using multiplication. Some examples of our questions we ask are, "How many jumping jacks did we just do?", "How many jumping jacks did we do in the first set?",  "Which set did we do more of?",  "Which set did we do less?"
We would manipulate how we counted. We would count forward and backward. We would count by 2's, 5's, 10's 100's. We would count forward and backward by those multiples.
Grouping is essential to pe. We group into lines to run relay races. We try and form even groups to move to different pe centers. We showed the students two different ways to group. We can use actual numbers or use estimation. We showed the students how to count off and divide into groups and explained we would this type of grouping if we are playing team sports so that the numbers will be fair. We also used estimation to get into groups that were somewhat even. We explained that estimation is a quick way for us to break into groups to move to centers of skill training. We explained that exact numbers weren't as important in the centers.

Using The Journal To Teach About Money

We will be using our PE journals to teach about money. Using money stamps we will reward the students' work with different denominations of money stamps. The students will then be able to "buy" different prizes. They will also be able to bid on prizes in an auction format. Effectively we will turn their journal into a checkbook.