Teaching Arrays Using General Mills® Cereal

As teachers and parents of school-aged children, we are always searching out the General Mills® cereals and other products on the shelves, knowing that not only will our children enjoy the product, our schools will also benefit from the Box Tops for Education.  As teachers, when we purchase a box of General Mills® cereal, we not only know the purchase will help us get needed resources, we are also purchasing a product that will become a classroom manipulative! We LOVE using cereal in the classroom as a math aid. There are an endless amount of ways that cereal can be used – if you haven’t tried it yet, use it tomorrow and watch engagement increase with your students.

Paige helped me begin pulling together some ideas to share on The Curriculum Corner when we were at Walmart last week. She had the easy job of picking out a few General Mills® cereals.  (As you can see, she definitely enjoyed her job!)

Today we are sharing a collection we put together to be used when teaching the second grade standard addressing arrays:  CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.OA.C.4 Use addition to find the total number of objects arranged in rectangular arrays with up to 5 rows and up to 5 columns; write an equation to express the total as a sum of equal addends.

You can use your cereal of choice. Cheerios™ are always a good go-to cereal in the classroom but sometimes we like to add a little twist by using a cereal such as Lucky Charms™. When doing an activity where students will be laying out the cereal, we are always careful to use a cereal that is flat as opposed to a round cereal that will roll right off the tables!

You can grab the free printables for the math array activity here: Cereal Math Arrays.

Here’s the activities you will find:
Introducing Arrays with Math Array Boards Print and laminate a board for each of your students. Give each child a small cup of Cheerios™ or another cereal of your choice. While this board is perfect to use with cereal as a manipulative, if you are not allowed to use food in your classroom, stickers could be used as a replacement.

My Cereal Array Activity This includes a set of cards with multiplication facts up to 5 x 5. Print and laminate the cards, cut and place into a basket. Place the cards and the printable page at a center along with cereal. Students draw a card, create an array using the cereal and then complete the page.

Array Practice This page is also designed to be used with the cards. It can be used when moving students away from manipulatives. Students complete the same steps without the help of the cereal as a visual.

Array Check Depending on your school requirements, this page can be used with or without the help of cereal as a manipulative. Students use the multiplication facts cards and share four arrays as an assessment.

We hope that the activities we put together will be helpful in your classroom or home. Don’t forget to pick up a box of your favorite General Mills® cereal next time you stop at Walmart. Not only will you be purchasing a perfect math manipulative, you will also be helping your school be one of over 80,000 schools who participate in the program.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of General Mills®. The opinions and text are all mine.