Fwd: Math write-up 7-9 year olds
Maria Droujkova
Here is the slide show to go with it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26208371@N06/tags/naturalmathclub09232010/show/
Stars prove to have pretty rich math in them. Kids made up a trampoline math game with stars that rocked today. We'll wait for Maria's story though (not me) - she took a big stack of notes!
Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
Make math your own, to make your own math.
From: Laura Combs
It was another great week at Math Club last Thursday. Maria let the class ebb and flow, flexible for the kids ideas and ultimately covering the material she planned (I think – Maria is so opportunistic with math you can never be fully sure!).
The day started with Colson’s Number Dudes. He brought his drawings of block style numbers containing human attributes such as arms, legs, mouth, eyes, etc. The number dudes had personalities and short stories around each pairing. Maria said that she made Number Dudes when she was young and that some other kids create them too. She had all the kids draw Number Dudes and they of course each had their own style.
Maria moved on to Digit review, which we covered last week. Digit are 0 – 9, for a total of 10 digits. Maria asked if 0 was male or female. Colson said male and Ava said female. She then had the other kids close their eyes and imagine the digit 0. At that point Crighton walked in with a praying mantis. Maria asked the kids to find the math in the mantis. They said 6 legs. Maria pulled up on the computer (which projected onto the wall) a picture of insect eyes and asked the kids to look at them. One suggested that the eyes had octagon shapes. The eyes had 6 sides and the kids settled on hexagon. Maria pointed out that this shape is like the cells of a beehive too.
Maria took the kids outside. They held hands, formed a circle and sat down. She proceeded to tie the kids to each other so that every kid was connected to every other kid. There were five kids total. She asked “What shape does this make?” One kid said hexagon. One said a house shape. Maria explained that it had five sides and was a pentagon.
Maria asked how many connections there are between people. Anna, who had already figured this, out said 20 because there are 5 people and each person connects to 4 others. Maria said “Lets find out” and she begins cutting the material binding the kids together as they all count. When Maria was done cutting they determined that there were only 10 connections, not 20. She asked “Where did the other 10 connections go?” We were supposed to get to that problem later, but unfortunately ran out of time to explore it.
Next came Apple Math. Maria cut the apples today so that they were star shaped. Then she sliced off the sides to form triangles.The kids weren’t too into this, so she went back to regular apple math, preparing to make various cuts and asking the kids how many pieces would be left when she was done cutting.
Maria asked the kids to make stars on paper so that the stars were the same as the one they made outside. She suggested that the kids draw five dots/circles/smily faces in the same way that the kids formed a circle outside. They were then to draw the connections, as they had done outside. The kids had different approaches to this and were challenged by scalability of their drawings and one kid just kept on trying to draw the star without making the connections. Once they got the hang of it the kids tried drawing shapes and connections with varying numbers of points up to 10. They determined that 4 points is a square, 3 a triangle. Then one kid started to play with curvy lines.
The class finished up with a story, Anno’s Magic Seed by Mitsumasa Anno and the kids build straw sculptures. The book had an algebraic basis with the most frequent formula being 2n-1. I don’t know if a kid realized this or I wrote it down because I did, so someone correct me if it is a kid!
Then it was time to end and time to bounce on the trampoline in the backyard.
Woohoo…another math club tomorrow!
Laura Combs
www.movingstronglyforward.typepad.com
The older I get, the better I feel!