Objective

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to apply arithmetic skills to solve Lego challenges and strengthen your understanding of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Materials and Prep

• Lego bricks
• Pen or pencil
• Paper

No prior knowledge or preparation is required for this lesson.

Activities

1. Build a Lego tower using a specific number of bricks. Write down the number of bricks used.

2. Take another set of Lego bricks and add them to the tower. Write down the new total number of bricks.

3. Subtract the initial number of bricks from the new total to find out how many bricks were added.

4. Now, divide the new total by the initial number of bricks to find out the multiplication factor.

5. Use the multiplication factor to calculate how many bricks would be needed to build a tower twice as tall as the original one.

Second Grade Talking Points

• "Arithmetic is the branch of mathematics that deals with numbers and operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division."
• "We can use arithmetic to solve problems and challenges, even with Lego!"
• "Addition means combining numbers to find the total. For example, if we have 3 Lego bricks and add 2 more, we get a total of 5 Lego bricks."
• "Subtraction means taking away numbers to find the difference. If we have 5 Lego bricks and remove 3, we are left with 2 Lego bricks."
• "Multiplication means repeated addition. If we have 2 Lego bricks and multiply them by 3, we get a total of 6 Lego bricks because we are adding 2 three times."
• "Division means splitting a number into equal parts. If we have 6 Lego bricks and divide them into 2 equal groups, each group will have 3 Lego bricks."