Unit 9

Time and Probability

In this chapter, we will be learning to tell time.  This is a skill that will find more use at home, so please give your child opportunities to practice.  It is important that your child practice telling time with an analog clock as well as a digital clock.
Note:  essential objectives are marked with an **

1.  We begin the chapter by using our knowledge of time to put pictures in order.

2.  We then explore the concept of time. What activities take more time than others, etc.
    Example:  What takes more time:  getting a drink or eating a meal?
                                                      drawing a picture or writing your
                                                                name?

3.  We are now ready to explore the length of a minute.
     Do the following activities take more or less than a minute?
            -zipping up your coat
            -eating breakfast
            -sleeping at night
            -putting on a sock

We then decide if activities take minutes or hours.**

        being at school              hours
        putting on your shoes    minutes
        brushing your hair        minutes
        going to the movies        hours

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4.  Before we can learn to tell time, we need to know the names of the hands on the clock and which direction they go.
    The hour hand is small and goes slow.
    The minute hand is tall and goes faster.

5.  We first learn to tell time to the hour.**

    When the hour hand is on the 10 and the minute hand is on 12, it is 10:00.
    When the hour hand is on the 5 and the minute hand is on 12, it is 5:00.
    When the hour hand is on the 3 and the minute hand is on 12, it is 3:00.

What do we notice about the minute hand on all of the o'clock times?

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6.  We are now ready to practice telling time to the half-hour.**

    When the hour hand is between the 5 and 6, and the minute hand is on the 6, it is 5:30.
    When the hour hand is between the 9 and 10, and the minute hand is on the 6, it is 9:30.
    When the hour hand is between the 12 and 1, and the minute hand is on the 6, it is 12:30.
    When the hour hand is between the 7 and 8, and the minute hand is on the 6, it is 7:30.

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7.  We practice telling time with real story-problems.

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8.  Learning to read a calendar is also a way to keep time.**
    You can ask your child the following questions:
    -How many days are in this month?
    -How many days are in the week?
    -How many Mondays are in this month?
    -Are there any holidays?
    -Name all the dates for Wednesday in this month?

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9.  Another topic in this unit is probability.** With probability, the boys and girls are learning what is their best chance of getting something.  We begin by putting 5 objects in a sack.  Each child has the opportunity to pull out on e object.  We keep a tally count of the number fore ach color.  We then looked at our tally count and tried to determine how many of each color would be in the sack.  For example,  if our choices of colors were green, red, and yellow and no one pulled out a yellow object, we would guess that there are no yellow objects in the sack.  If a lot of green were pulled out, we assume there are more green than red objects.

    We then practice with the toss of a coin.  We might toss a penny 10 times to see if we get more heads or tails.  We would repeat this several times to see that it's not likely that we would get the same answer twice.

    We also practiced with color spinners. As we take turns spinning the spinner, we keep track of our results with tally counting.  We notice that our chances of getting a certain color may improve if there is more of that color on the spinner.

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