Math Monday::Calling All Math Haterz!
I love that math is one of the few things you can admit to hating, without sounding ignorant and simpleminded. This standard doesn’t apply to much else…it’s not like you can walk around saying, “Oh, I hate reading. I never do it if I don’t have to” or “I can’t stand history. I’m totally phobic about it!”
I do hate that so many people hate it, though. I hate that I used to dislike it so much, I would literally cry anytime I had to do it. I hate that in school, math is taught as mainly a way to do computations, and misses out on the beauty and sublime patterns of numbers. Yes, beauty. Poetry might be the language of lovers, but math is the language of life. And once I discovered that, I fell in love. Mad, deep love! Then when I fell in love, I shared it with my math phobic and traumathtized daughter who also fell head over heels in love. This is saying something for 2 people with dyscalculia!
A few of my blogs on the matter, talking about number circles and patterning, caught the eye of Sue over at Math Mama Writes. She asked if she could republish it in a book she’s working on, “Playing With Math”, and of course I said yes. Irony is one of my favorite literary concepts, and what’s more ironic than me being published first in a math book. Ha! Revenge of the Math Hater! All them bitches that failed me in math classes can suck it!
I have two favors to ask on this matter. One, is to take this poll, which would help Sue out. It quite possibly could be the easiest thing you do all day!:
[polldaddy poll=5139728]
Next, she’s looking for people to join a reader response team:
If you’d like an early peek at the book and the glory of being in the acknowledgements, you can sign up to be a part of the Reader Response Team. You’ll get 3 to 5 chapters a week to read (starting this Wednesday). We don’t need close editing for grammar and spelling at this point. What we need is your opinions as reviewers: What works? What doesn’t? What’s missing? And a rating for each chapter (Keep, Toss, or Wow!).
You’ll make a commitment to review the chapters within the week; it will take 11 weeks to read through the whole book. (Or you can pick the Summer Speed Reading option, and get the whole manuscript all at once.) Each week, discussions among the Reader Response Team will bring new depth to the already wonderful writing.
We are especially looking for people who love to read and do not like math. You are our acid test of the book!
If you’re interested, link through and leave a comment on her blog. Not only will you get a chance to get a sneak peak of a revolutionary math book for FREE, you will also pick up some amazing ideas about math. It’s a win/win!
Math Haterz Unite!
Share TweetMath Monday::Fun Games!
It’s been a while, right?! Not only for a bloggy update (so sorry! I’ve been so sick! And so tired! And mostly sick!), but for one of these math monday posts!
As for the lack of MM posts, I’ll let you in on a secret. When unschooling, often my attention or the kids attention will veer away from the subject with a capital M “Math” into the subject with a lowercase L “life”.
When we moved away from Colorado, it was the end of our Math Club, which we’re all still sad about. And with all the moving and traveling and moving and traveling this past year, we haven’t dove into our ‘math box’–the place with all our mathy supplies–to pick up any kind of math exploration in the way that schools would recognize it…planned study with a specific math focus.
A couple years ago this would have freaked me out and led to sleepless nights of parental angst about if I was impeding my children’s growth and development by not having them actively memorize their multiplication tables and pass tests about it.
Now, I recognize that math is everywhere in the world. Golfer loves his playstation NBA 2011 basketball game mostly because he can be the GM and trade players around to build an awesome team. Working with numbers, budgets, statistics, etc….it’s all math. They aren’t doing math drills, but they are building their mathmatical skills in everything they do. Happily. And more importantly, they have a neutral if not happy and easy relationship with numbers…even Naturalist and her dyscalculia…which is far far better than having an adversarial or bored relationship with them.
I share this just to poke my hand up out of the sea of masses doing math the old fashioned way…drills, workbooks, school, homework, tests…to say it doesn’t really have to be that way. Math literacy can come another way; through cooking, sewing, investigating, experimenting, building, questioning, and (my favorite!) playing!
I’ve noticed that dice games are played pretty frequently here, and dice in any form = math, so I thought I’d share our favorite, always out on the table, games.
Yahtzee is always fun, but made even more so in a giant M&M! And we’re always up for tic tac toe.
Shut the Box is also in heavy play around here. I like this one because it goes up to 12 instead of 10:
but this one is the best if you have up to 4 people who want to go head to head in shut the box deathmatch:
Then there are dice activity books, even though kids will make up a lot of games on their own if you only get some dice in their hands. But some of these games are pretty fun, too!
for younger kids:
For older kids:
There’s dice for every occasion:
Honestly, you can forget all those things in favor of one magical collection. A collection of 100 die. Because if you’ve never held a pound of various kinds of dice in your hands, then you haven’t lived yet. Or your kids. Mine will sit with all these dice spread out and made up their own dice games (with is always heavy on the math computation, in a fun beside-the-point way!) for hours at a time.
If you have all the polyhedra dice you can stand, then we also enjoy these dice-within-a-dice:
I’ve discovered that playing math is much more productive than doing math. Try it if you haven’t already, especially if you have a kid that is math reluctant.
Share TweetMath Monday::Perimeter, Area & Volume via A Computer Game!
My kids have become obsessed with a computer game called Minecraft. It’s available for beta testing through the link for around $15. It’s the best money I’ve ever spent on a game.
The graphics will take you back to 1984. Blocky, undetailed, bare bones. So pixelated, everything is in the shape of a block…sheep, cows, trees, zombies, chickens, etc. The gameplay is totally open ended. There are just a couple goals: build a shelter. Survive the night (when zombies and other nasty things come out to get you…although there is a peaceful setting to avoid confrontation for those who are overly sensitive). Besides that, you are free to explore, mine, and build unlimitedly. Here’s a trailer for it:
It’s playable on any level…my 6, 11 and 14 year olds each play it in their own way. Simple in form, but complex in the amount of creativity it inspires. You use the material you mine to create and build anything you want. My kids play separately, but they also come together and play as a team. Golfer calls himself an architect and landscaper–he conceptualizes the buildings he wants and landscapes the environment by clearing and leveling the ground. Naturalist calls herself the builder. She takes his ideas, draws the schematics, then uses the area he’s cleared off to build what he wants, all within the framework of how much material he has. So, for instance, Golfer flattens a 100 by 100 square space. He has 7 bunches of 64 blocks. She has to figure out how many blocks he has total, and figures out how big the perimeter of the building can be, and how tall it can be built. This is a girl who hates math. But she loves conceptualizing what she can build! It’s like, not math at all!
I’ve never seen a more fun and organic way to learn perimeter, area, and volume in my life!
They love this game so much, they dressed up as ‘creepers’ for halloween–creepers are some of the ghouly things that appear sometimes when you least expect it!
The good thing about being creepers is that their costume entailed painting 3 boxes green. Best halloween idea EVER! Especially for me now that I’ve entered into a rare non-crafty time of my life.
If you haven’t found Minecraft yet, by all means go check it out! Play the game to play the game and have fun, but don’t say I didn’t warn you that math skills will be picked up along the way!
read moreMath Monday::Plan A Party!!!!
Math, schmath.
What we really like over here are parties!
This week is a big one for us. Naturalist turns 14 (!!!!), we have a day of rest, and then Golfer turns 11 (!!!!), we have a day of rest, and then Hubby and I have our anniversary.
As much as a party girl as I am, coordinating all that is a bit overwhelming. And a few years ago, Naturalist decided to take over her party, which turned out to be a great big help. And a great big exercise in math!
Take a catalogue like Oriental Trading Company. It is a treasure trove of mathmatical goodness!
Sit down and set a budget with your kid. Decide what you need to get with that budget…purely decorations or gift bags and tableware too. Decide how many people you’ll have at your party to help with the amount of party stuff you’ll need. Once you get the groundwork down, sit back and let them plan away.
A calculator helps keep track of the running total of all the goodies. They quickly learn navigating unit prices vs. bulk prices, staying within a budget, prioritizing, organizing categories, making hard choices between two good things, and calculating sale items to stretch the budget further.
This is our kind of math!
At the end we figure out what the cost per person is, and what happens if we invite more/fewer people to the party.
Now that I’m writing this up, it’s reminding me how genius party planning is for teaching and learning math concepts. We haven’t done it in a while, but I use to have stacks of old Oriental Trading Company catalogues laying around for ‘theoretical’ party planning, and the kids could use it to come up with different theme parties if we ever had one. Sometimes our theoretical budget was large, sometimes it was small. Either way, it was a lot of fun.
This is a perfect holiday activity–forget doing everything yourself…let your kid(s) plan the decorations for Thanksgiving/Halloween/Christmas, and then let them set it up using their awesome mathmatical budgeting/computing/unit pricing/planning skills!
read moreMath Monday::Using percentages and ratios in everyday life.
I read a great suggestion over at The Math Mom (tagline: Life is a puzzle. Solve it with numbers. Ha!), about using ratios with kids to help keep the house clean. She suggests:
Use this math trick to declare clear closet clean-up guidelines for your mess makers. Define a ratio of order vs mess. A ratio between a number of properly shelved items to a number of messed up items. When it gets to 1 – time to re-organize.
Such a good idea. And it underscores how easy math terms are to introduce into everyday life, even if you or I aren’t the rocket scientists of the math world. (Did I ever tell you about the time my younger sister actually dated a rocket scientist? No? Maybe another time…the jokes were priceless…)
I try to use percentage and ratio often in my unschooling life with the kids. They’re particularly great for explaining:
Emotions:
“I am 45 (or 20/55/heavenforbid95) % cranky right now.”
“I am 85% happy right now”
“I love you 100%!”
Needs:
“I am 35% in a hurry to get out the door!”
“I 75% need to eat in the next 20 minutes!”
“I want that dessert 100%!”
Sometimes you can combine the two…math bingo!!!
“The dishwasher needs to be 100% unloaded in the next 10 minutes or I will be 68% cranky!”
Ratios are also great to use for needs and emotions.
“I am 2 parts happy to 1 part hungry”
“I am 4 parts tired to 1 part frustrated”
“I am 5 parts at the end of my rope to 2 parts freaking out!”
It’s a nice real world way to get the point across while also teaching math concepts. So easy, even my 6 year old can do it!
read moreMath Monday::Snack Food Fractions
Here at freeplaylife, we’re not always down for math. But we’re always down for eating, so sometimes ya gots ta get a little snack math on up in the house!
To see our mathmatically awesome fraction fun in real time, we took a video of our antics. (Feed readers, I don’t know how to make it show up in the feed…any tips?!)
This Math Monday is inspired by our love of food, and our love of fractions, and our love of hiking. Tonight, we’re going to hike around Griffith Park, and we need some trail mix to keep us energized. So, here’s what we do to incorporate math and food…
We get out every snack food we have in the cupboard. Today it was an assortment of dried fruits, nuts, m&m’s, marshmallows, granola, pretzels, and popcorn.
We decide on the amount we want to make. Each person, today, wanted 2 cups worth of trail mix. Then we get out our measuring cups. To make it easy for the 6 year old, I stick with matching fractional measures, like 1 cup, 1/2 cup, and 1/4 cup. For older kids, you can mix in some 1/3′s to make it more of a challenge. Then, I set them loose on the ingredients, making sure to keep their recipe written down so we can repeat it if we like their blend.
Here’s Golfer’s recipe…he’s almost done!
The older kids can add up the fractions mentally, or just by looking at the fractions. For Sassy, I make a little chart of 1/4ths equaling 2 wholes. Then, everytime she measures out her ingredients, she can fill in the spaces and know how much more she has to go.
As you can tell, her recipe is very easy to follow:
And doesn’t it look delicious?!
By the end, we each have our totally unique blend of snack foods that make up some delicious trail mix!
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 it. They do a good job explaining everything!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZE1LCvVnwE&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
If, for some reason, we do not do a good job explaining everything, forgive us. It must be the late night and sugary dessert that got to us. Leave a question and I’ll explain it all later, after a nice long rest…
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Books and games we’ve enjoyed:
Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature
Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry
Studies in Symmetry with pattern blocks.
Symmetry Letters – (26 letter shapes)
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resources on the web:
More pictures (300+) and information about echinoderms.
Going Bananas for Echinoderms; a sheet that describes how you can do this same thing on your own with just a banana. You can name yours whatever you want.
Fantastic and simple article about five fold symmetry.
Images of things with Pentagonal symmetry.
read moreMath 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 route to learning.
Children learn through various methods, but often their physical and social world teaches them the most.
This is true for adults, too, but I think most of us have forgotten that!
In any case, the physical aspect of playing in the water and sifting through the sand can open up so many discussions that are so mathmatically important. I know many of you don’t have a beach access, but it’s really not about the beach at all. The process of introducing math to any mind is more about opening yourself up to the discussions and details and play no matter where you are.
For us, being so close to the beach, we spend a lot of time in the waves. We do not compute math problems while there. We do not take timed tests. We do not memorize times tables. But we do discuss physics!
I, personally, never took physics, I could barely pass Math 101 in college (hello dyscalculia!) but my sister minored in it. Go figure. Anyways, I know she studied waves. Waves are a part of the science of physics, defined as a type of change that moves from place to place.
Instead of learning about waves from a textbook, we are learning about them from the real deal…the waves themselves. If you don’t have a beach close by for your kid (or yourself!) to play in, take the play to a bath or hot tub or pool or kitchen sink.
We like to throw a ball out as far into the ocean as we can, and then try to be the first person to get it back. The ball hovers over the waves, bobbing and dipping, until it gets caught in a breaking wave and comes towards shore. Often, in the midst of going to get it, one of us gets caught in a breaking wave as well, and gets tumbled on the sand. I’ll show you a video of our in depth learning:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKizJFt-_g0&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/user/childsplay4#p/u/17/jKizJFt-_g0]
You may be saying to yourself….but wait, you’re just playing with a ball at the ocean! And you’d be right. That’s the beauty of Math Mondays! So much of it is rooted in play, and the learning and exploring feels happy and not like learning at all. I’ll review some of the discussions we’ve had because of our beach play.
* Is the wave moving the ball, or is the ball moving over the wave?
* If a wave is approaching, where is the best place to be…the bottom (underneath the water), the middle (face) or top (crest)?
* Do big and small waves have the same force against an object?
* what makes a wave move?
* What makes a wave break?
* What is the most dangerous kind of wave?
* Can you ever throw a ball far enough out so it doesn’t come back to the same shore?
Sometimes I answer their questions, usually–because I’m no physics major, I just wonder along with them. In a break with public school, I believe the most learning happens in the questions, not the answers. I rarely introduce a subject unless my kids are questioning a lot about it, because their minds are the most receptive to studying something if they want answers.
Throw a bunch of balls in the bath, hot tub, or pool and let the play begin. Keep an ear out for the early signs of wave exploration!
Then, trips to the library can begin. There are lots of books on waves. The kids and I have poured over this wikipedia article on waves. We also liked this series of “lessons” on waves from The Physics Classroom!
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more links:
transcendental Ideas about Education
How You Can Support Children’s Learning Through Play
read moreMath 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 check it out.
It. rocked. my. world.
Seriously, go read it.
Right now.
Normally I don’t like people to leave my blog in the middle of my post, but I’ll make an exception…just promise to come back!
For realz, why are you still reading this?!
For all you who don’t want to hyperlink out of my little heavenly haven of bloggy goodness, I’ll sum up.
In 1929, the superintendent of schools in Ithaca, New York, sent out a challenge to his colleagues in other cities. “What,” he asked, “can we drop from the elementary school curriculum?” He complained that over the years new subjects were continuously being added and nothing was being subtracted, with the result that the school day was packed with too many subjects and there was little time to reflect seriously on anything.
Another superintendent replied back with a shocking answer….drop arithmetic. And why would he say this?! Read on:
“For some years I had noted that the effect of the early introduction of arithmetic had been to dull and almost chloroform the child’s reasoning facilities.” All that drill, he claimed, had divorced the whole realm of numbers and arithmetic, in the children’s minds, from common sense, with the result that they could do the calculations as taught to them, but didn’t understand what they were doing and couldn’t apply the calculations to real life problems. He believed that if arithmetic were not taught until later on–preferably not until seventh grade–the kids would learn it with far less effort and greater understanding.
Considering that we here at Child’s Play have intuitively done just such an outrageous thing as not seriously begin a math curriculum during early and middle elementary years, this really peaked my interest.
Benezet followed his outrageous suggestion with an outrageous experiment. He asked the principals and teachers in some of the schools located in the poorest parts of Manchester to drop the third R from the early grades. They would not teach arithmetic–no adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing. he asked the teachers of the earlier grades to devote some of the time that they would normally spend on arithmetic to the new third R–recitation. The children would be asked to talk about topics that interested them–experiences they had had, movies they had seen, or anything that would lead to genuine, lively communication and discussion. This, he thought, would improve their abilities to reason and communicate logically.
This, also is what we’ve done just instinctively. Math is more than numbers. Numbers are a way of expressing math, but at it’s core, mathmatics is all about logic, reason, problem solving, and a certain kind of thought process. And those things can be done without numbers at all, and strengthen a mind to prepare it for dealing with numbers later. But I digress.
So, how did his experiment turn out? The article goes in to greater depth, but in short:
Benezet showed that kids who received just one year of arithmetic, in sixth grade, performed at least as well on standard calculations and much better on story problems than kids who had received several years of arithmetic training. This was all the more remarkable because of the fact that those who received just one year of training were from the poorest neighborhoods–the neighborhoods that had previously produced the poorest test results.
Isn’t that so counter culture?!
Speaking just from our experience, since we’ve unknowingly recreated that experiment ourselves, our math abilities only took off when we dropped a math curriculum altogether.
What we’ve done instead is supplement our day with lots of critical thinking skills, lots of word play, lots of measuring, counting, and questioning, lots of diagraming and organizing…
And I can’t forget all the brain Teasers that get your mind thinking.
When doing math, think outside the box…especially if you have an outside of the box thinker!
link through to past Math Monday posts here
read moreMath Monday::Sorting!
As you all may have guessed by now, I‘m a reformed hoarder. I’ve ended up selling everything I own to take this RV adventure, but there are a few things I’ve kept. And one of those things is a big 3 gallon bag of quarter size knick knacks. I’ve got buttons, marbles, glass beads, and other small random small objects. It’s a gold mine for fun math activities!
First, we use them as markers for board games or other math monday games (especially the Magic Multiple stuff!).
Secondly, it makes for a fantastic sorting activity.
You may not think of sorting as particularly mathmatical. However, the simple act of sorting can be applied to so many math standards…here’s a small example. If you click through this link and do some of these sorting activities (grade K-2) here’s what you’ll be doing:
Academic Standards and Assessment for Mathematics-
2.1.3- Numbers, Number Systems and Number Relationships-
G. Use concrete objects to count, order, and group.
2.4.3- Mathematical Reasoning and Connections-
A. Make, check and verify predictions about the quantity, size and shape of objects and groups of objects.
2.6.3- Statistics and Data Analysis-
A. Gather, organize and display data using pictures, tallies, charts, bar graphs and pictographs. C. Predict the likely number of times a condition will occur based on analyzed data.
2.8.3- Algebra and Functions-
A. Recognize, describe, extend, create, and replicate a variety of patterns including attribute, activity, number and geometric patterns. H. Describe and interpret the data shown in tables and charts.Objectives:
The students will develop the skills to examine a group of objects and determine possible ways to categorize them.
The students will be able to analyze and classify data in different ways allowing them to sort them into groups.
The students will be able to distinguish similarities and differences between objects.
The students will be able to draw a bar graph using the data they found from sorting their show-n-tell items.
The students will be able to arrange objects from largest to smallest.
So, don’t underestimate the power of sorting and classifying!
First, Sassy sorts through and gets all the glass beads. Then she sorts them according to some criteria she decides. Sometimes it’s by size, sometimes shape, sometimes color. Today, she sorted them by color.
and then found a couple stragglers that didn’t match anything else but themselves:
We sort things all the time. When we’re at the beach, after we’ve collected seashells, we sort them however Sassy decides. In restaurants, we put everything on the table in the middle and sort them into groups. This takes some imagination…like, ‘things we use to eat with’, ‘things we eat’, ‘things we don’t use to eat with or eat’.
If your kids are older, you can take sorting into other directions. Using the good ole Venn Diagram idea, you can use the same simple materials to sort things into multiple categories and then see where they overlap. Best of all, especially when you’re on the road like we are, this can be done anywhere, anytime, with just about anything.
our favorite sorting games:
older kids–
SET Game
younger kids–
Beginning Sorting Set – 168 Pieces
Let’s Tackle Math Patterning and Sequencing Set
UNIFIX Letter Cubes, Alphabet Sorting Box Only
Thanks For Sharing!