Number Crunchers

First-graders on the Doherty Campus brought a whole new meaning to the term, number crunchers in mid-November. “We discussed how we can represent place value blocks with food,” said Kulhavik. “I let them guess which food stands for which blocks and then I demonstrated how the students would use the food to count and make numbers.” The students used cheese cubes for the thousands place, Cheez-Its for hundreds, pretzel sticks for the tens place, and Skittles for ones. The first-graders then used their knowledge to build four-digit number models using the food. The students made their number by rolling dice and then used a recording sheet to write about each number they made.