Math Monday::Banana Dave Edition!

So, the big question here today was: What does a sea star and a banana named Dave have in common? A: They both have pentagonal symmetry! To explain further, here are my hooligan kids. This was originally the practice version, but then I realized it was almost 10 and I’m exhausted so we went with [...]

Math Monday::Beach (or Pool, or Bath) Physics!

If I organized a school, kinda like what Emerson and Alcott and Thoreau did (all of them transcendentalists…I’m mad for transcendentalism and their impact on alternative education in America…) then I’d make sure to set it up on a coast where kids could play in the surf and sand. To children, play is the fastest [...]

Math Monday::Teach Less Math in School.

I discovered last night that my favorite Math guru and total inspiration, Sue VanHattum (and her blog, Math Mama Writes was referenced in an article in Psychology Today, called When Less Is More, The Case For Teaching Less Math In School. Intrigued with the punk rock title of the article, I immediately went over to [...]

Math Monday:: Domino Math!

Don’t faint, but I’m actually posting a Math Monday blog today! I’ve picked up a few more readers, so I’ll explain… I am a recovering mathphobe. I hated math growing up, panicked about it in school, felt stupid doing it for my whole life. I can’t really even remember simple addition problems, let alone memorize [...]

Math Monday::Memory Games = Better Math Skills

I noticed with Naturalist and myself that a lot of our problems with math actually have very little to do with the numbers and lots to do with our poor short term memory. (well, actually, we also have big problems with numbers, too, but one thing at a time!) If you have a mathphobic kid [...]

Math Monday::Pentominoes, part 2.

When I last left off our pentominoes investigation, the kids had made the pentomino shapes out of square pieces of paper and laminated them. The sheets of pentominoes looked like this, and then we cut them out: So now that they each had 12 pentomino shapes as their game pieces (review of what a pentomino [...]

Math Monday::Pentominoes!

{as an aside, let’s just all pretend that I actually write and post these on Monday, it would help keep the whole ‘math monday’ alliteration theme going…and help me keep my dignity…} A few weeks ago, our Creative Math club met together and did even more things with the square inch pieces of paper that [...]

Math Monday:: “Simon Says…” Angles Math

In the spirit of Trampoline Math, our Math Club last week opened with some new Simon Says activities. Our exploration into square numbers and then the Pythagorean Theorem also led us into discussing angles and triangles. The angles being: obtuse (bigger than 90 degrees), accute (smaller than 90 degrees), and right (90 degrees exactly). The [...]

Math Monday::Pythagorean Theorem

For our latest Creative Math Club, Sonja (who I’m happy to say is rested and recovered from her family’s bout with the flu!) prepared some activities having to do with the Pythagorean Theorem. We geared this one towards the older set of kids, those between the ages of 10-15. We had an amazing turnout for [...]

Math Monday::Halloween Symmetry!

With Halloween being not to far away, at least for us here in the USA (which reminds me of a hysterical story involving our attempt to trick or treat with the kids when we lived in Budapest…but I’ll save that for later…), we’ve been crafting like crazy. Also, the leaves are almost all off the [...]