Water Bag Challenge

I'm a teacher through and through...I just can't help myself! Even on days off of school, I like to find some "teachable moment" to take advantage of. The kids had off of school both Friday and today (Monday) for mid-term break. We ended up staying around the home, and the kids love going on walks, so today we went for a nice long one.

As I mentioned before, we drink our water out of 500 mL plastic bags, which they call "rubbers". As a math activity to teach the concept of place value and just big number sense in general, I had the idea of have the kids collect water bags, working toward a goal of 10,000! They litter the roads, ditches, and "yards" just about everywhere, so I thought it could be a good way to teach the kids to "help keep Ghana clean" while also learning math! I know, I'm a nerd! :)

So, on our walk, I challenged the kids to each pick up 10. There were 34 of us so that'd make 340. I thought that'd be a pretty good start. Well, apparently I highly underestimated my crew, as we spend hours today grouping them in piles of 10, then putting 10 groups of ten together to make a hundred, etc, until we had reached...2,963!!! Wow...I couldn't believe it!

I'll have to keep you updated on our progress as we aim for 10,000!

In the back of this picture you can see a beautiful sunset: one thing I need to take advantage of more often! Today was really, really hot (90), but with extremely high humidity; then about 3:30, the temperature dropped from 90 to 79 in about 5 minutes as the rain poured down...what a welcome sight that was! :)