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What Is The History Behind The Broom Challenge? It's back again, everybody. The Broom Challenge asks you whether you can balance a broom upright on its bristles. It's swept rapidly through social media, from Tik-Tok to Facebook. It began on Instagram on the 7th, and it exploded with a tweet on the 10th from Twitter user @mikaiylaaaaa, citing a supposed announcement from NASA. Or did it begin here? The same challenge was trending back in 2012, claiming that brooms would stand up on the spring equinox. Many other sources are citing this as the origin of the trend, and calling that the end of it. The Secret History of the Broom Challenge But just a little further back, the idea was alive and well, though it took the form of…

Throw an Active Valentine's Day Party for Your Class! February is here, which means your school Valentine's Day party is coming up. Usually, these parties involve games, activities, and sweet treats. But your class can still stay active and healthy while having fun. Here are some Valentine’s Day class party ideas that will keep your students engaged and learning!Jump Rope for HeartDuring February, the American Heart Association hosts its annual Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser. Students raise money for heart disease research through various jump rope activities. Include some Valentine’s Day-themed activities in their exercises and challenges during gym class, like jumping rope around the gym to see who can collect the most paper hearts!Jump Rope for Heart’s Skipping Skills works well with kinesthetic learning techniques. Your students could jump…

After School Program at GIAC On October 22, 2019, Math & Movement hosted an after school program for 11 students at the Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC). The goal was to increase student performance and understanding of skip-counting and multiplication. As a bonus, students gained extra physical activity throughout the day. Hop To Multiplication! The program started with a pre-test to measure students’ math skills. As a group, they averaged 19% of correct answers. They learned the basketball and soccer ball movements as a warm-up to learn one-to-one correspondence and skip counting. Students then practiced skip counting by 3’s on our floor mats to solve multiplication problems. They jumped, hopped, and skipped to fill out a practice worksheet. They worked in pairs as part of a flexible grouping strategy, which…

Math Manipulatives in the Classroom What do blocks, colorful plastic teddy bears, and wooden shapes have in common? They're all math manipulatives! They can certainly make learning math more fun, but do they help students master mathematical concepts? The research points to YES! What Are Math Manipulatives? Math manipulatives are physical objects students can use to better understand abstract math concepts. These tools can serve many different purposes - plastic animals for counting; dice for multiplication; colorful shapes for geometry. Manipulatives help students conceptualize through counting, weighing, measuring, adding, and molding objects. The opportunity to simply see concrete representations of concepts can make all the difference in how well students understand math concepts. How Do They Work? Math is a highly abstract subject, and many students have trouble making sense…