Frog Math: Predict, Ponder, Play - Teacher's Guide

In an artful interweaving of mathematics and literature, this series of lively mathematics activities jumps off from one of the well-known "Frog and Toad" stories, "The Lost Button." The story leads to free exploration of buttons, then sorting and classifying and a "Guess the Sort" game. Students design their own buttons and use a graphing grid to organize data. Students also "guesstimate" the number of small plastic frogs in a jar and the number of lima beans in a handful to develop the valuable life skill of estimating. A "Frog Pond" board game helps students develop strategic-thinking skills. The "Hop to the Pond Game" is an experiment in probability and statistics. In the newly revised guide, all grade levels play the fair version of "Hop to the Pond" with six frogs. Then grades 13 play the unfair version with 12 frogs. Emphasis throughout is on student cooperation. The California Math Council has named Frog Math as a recommended replacement unit.