Buttons Years K - 4

Summary At a workshop teachers were discussing how Task 123, Bob's Buttons, could be adapted to use with infants. It was suggested that instead of using two conditions, as in the original problem, just one would be challenge enough. The storyshell below about ...my mum's button drawer... was the result. The activity is flexible. It can be as simple as take out some buttons and count them - for example, the photo shows Kindy children (4 year olds) preparing their button drawer - or it can be built around arranging any number of buttons in equal groups, with or without leftovers. Suitable for threading. Materials One Poly Plug red board each Paper bowl or small ice-cream container for each person (or pair) Calculators Recording paper or maths journal

Procedure Part A: Whole Class Gather the children in a circle on the mat. You will need a red board and a container (or perhaps two red boards for older children). When I was young my mum had a sewing machine on a sort of trolley. The trolley had drawers and one of the drawers was full of buttons. All sorts of buttons. Remove the plugs from your board and put them in the container to indicate the button drawer. It is suggested you stick with all red plugs to begin with so the colour isn't distracting. I used to love running my hand through the buttons. They felt great. Demonstrate as you describe the experience. Would you like to feel my buttons? ... How do they feel to you?

Content counting division group (or skip) counting multiples, factors & primes multiplication operations - whole number pattern generalisation pattern interpretation pattern recognition problem solving recording - calculator recording - written sorting & classifying visual and kinaesthetic representation of number

Then I would take out a bunch of buttons and... Now it depends on the age and experience of the children you are working with. It could be: ...put them on the floor. My daddy would come along and he would say 'Douglas can you count those buttons?' and I would. Or it could be: ...sort them into groups with the same number of buttons. In either case, demonstrate as you tell the story. For example take out a bunch of plugs and ask the children to guess the number of buttons. Record the guesses, then invite a child to help you count ... or ask two children to sort them into groups of 3. Check the result against the guesses, then invite the children to make their own button drawer. Would you like to make your own pretend drawer of buttons?

	It's easy to lose track of the start when you are counting buttons in a jumbled pile. Encourage children to pick up a plug and move it to another place as they count. Caleb moved his into a line and then they were easy to count (well if you get a bit of help with saying the teen numbers).

Working with older children challenge them to:

• Count the number of 'buttons', encouraging skip counting in groups, adding the 'leftovers' at the end.
• Can we check this another way? Encourage using the calculator. Children might suggest more than one way of doing this. For example, if 31 plugs are involved they might add 3 for each group then add one at the end. Alternatively, they might use 10 x 3 + 1.
• Record the result, including the left-overs, on the whiteboard in the appropriate language, eg: 10 groups of 3 + 1 = 31.

Put the plugs back, take out another bunch and ask children to sort them into groups of ... (your choice). Check and record again. Keep up this procedure until children are confident about what is involved.

Part B: Small Group Work Invite children to put some or all of their red plugs into the container. Take out a bunch. Any size you like. Now sort it into your own size group. Make sure children check and record the result. They can also show their records to another group to be checked. Continue this activity as appropriate.

Part C: Button Problems Each day ask a question like the following and allow time to explore with the plugs. The nice thing about these problems is that there is more than one answer ... and the answers form a pattern. Challenge enough for every one. Jamie and Chenille made groups of 7 with their buttons and they had 5 left. How many buttons could have been in their bunch?

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