Coordinate Systems

I love using this homemade shower curtain coordinate plane for teaching corrdinate systems. I read the book Fly on the Ceiling. It is a cute book about Rene Decartes (creator of the coordinate system) and how he seems to loose everything. He sees a fly on the ceiling and it gives him an idea to draw a grid on the ceiling. He then decides to do this to keep track of all of his things and records their coordinates.

After we read it once, I hand out the laminated pictures from the book with velco on the back-also the plastic fly. I have then walk the coordinates so they know to do the x-axis first, then the y-axis. My students love this lesson!