Yuletide Fun with Geometry

“GingerbreadHouse” by NadinLisa is licensed under CCby 2.0

Agreed, the holiday season is not a time to talk or teach or have anything at all to do with studies, least of all learning math. But then, what if your teacher told you that your Christmas project is something to do with learning geometry? Well, that’s exactly what Ms. Reeves math class at Kinston school was asked to do – draw graphs for their Christmas project. However, it’s not as bad as it sounds; their Christmas project was made up of geometry, graphs, baking and at the same time, was scrumptious too. Have a look at this video and you’ll know how.

Who would say no to such a yummy Christmas project? When the competition entails building the ultimate gingerbread house, who wouldn’t go all out to ensure his or her house is the tastiest? Especially when parents are involved in the task, it gets all the more fun. Chocolate roofs and candy canes, what better way to kick off the Yuletide spirit and the holidays?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you!

Spooky Math Fun with Shapes

Math always was spooky. I see a wide majority of people out there (including myself) vigorously nodding their heads in approval! Well, why not use this ‘spooky math’ to teach your little one the basics of geometrical shapes this Halloween?

Here’s a fun activity to do, which also doubles up as a craft. We all enjoy making jack-o’-lanterns out of pumpkins in order to keep them on our porches outdoors for Halloween. Let’s try our hand at making paper jack-o’-lanterns too for a change; they’ll look good adorning the walls indoors, especially the kids’ rooms!

Image courtesy: Toddler Approved

Simply draw the outline of a large pumpkin on a white sheet of paper and let your child color it a bright orange. Now cut it out. On a separate sheet of paper, draw various other basic shapes – triangles, squares, rectangles, circles, semi-circles, even a star or two. Ask your child to identify each shape and color all the similar ones a particular shade – such as yellow for circles, black for squares, blue for stars and so on. Once that is done, you could cut out the shapes as well; these can now be glued on to the orange pumpkin from the first step and, lo and behold, you have a cheery-looking multi-colored pumpkin grinning back at you!

Have a good, spooky Halloween!

Playing Around with Math

“Mathematics” by OpenClipart-Vectors is licensed under CC by 2.0

These days I’m trying to teach my daughter to ‘play with numbers’. Right from using building blocks to count from 1 to 10, playing board games like snakes and ladders in which one has to count ahead spaces at every step and add numbers together to mastering the fundamentals of the basic number line through a simple game of hopscotch, we’re doing it all. And it’s a whole lot of fun.

We also have an abacus at home now. Earlier I was of the view that it could only be used to do simple addition and subtraction; but then on reading more about this fun calculating tool, we’ve started doing more complex operations like multiplication and division too, albeit of small numbers.

We try and include math in our everyday activities – in the kitchen learning about volumes, playing online math games on the computer and the like. Kids (at least mine) tend to develop a natural aversion to the subject if they are made to sit down with a list of problems on a worksheet and asked to solve them. The key to making the subject fun is to involve imaginative play in math, something that is a part of their everyday routine and yet is enjoyable.

3 Fun Ways to Prevent the Math Summer Slide

According to a research carried out by Oxford Learning, an online program which caters to the learning needs of students of different age groups, math skills equivalent to approximately 2.6 months of learning are lost by kids over the summer vacation. What’s more, if kids and parents manage to put in just 2-3 hours per week towards the subject, this learning loss can be prevented to a considerable extent. Also, Duke University researchers claim that math skills decline more over the summer than academic skills in any other subject.

“Mathematics” by ArtsyBee is licensed under CC by 2.0

Here are a couple of fun math activities that can be used to brush up the kids’ math skills over the summer so that they are able to retain a good part of whatever was taught to them over the past academic year.

Math in the Kitchen

Ask your kid to count how many cookies are there on the cookie tray once it comes freshly baked out of the oven. A good way would be to count the number of rows and columns to calculate the number of cookies, hence helping the kids recall and practice their multiplication tables. Allow your kids to measure out the volume of water that goes into the spaghetti recipe you’re cooking. Younger kids can be made to set the table for dinner and count out the number of forks and knives required for the people at the dining table. The number of pints in a gallon, the number of ounces in a cup, kids can get to know these basics of math measurements like the back of their hand if they help out in the kitchen on an everyday basis.

Math with Games

You can pick from an endless variety of exciting math games to play with your kids and as a family. One of the relatively recent additions to the market is what is known as printable math games – what you need to do is simply download certain e-books from the internet to your computer, print them out and voila! You have a great math game on your hands which you’ve never played before. Alternatively, you could introduce your child to online math games which come in all shapes and sizes and for all ages. Playing card games or board games like the tried-and-tested monopoly are other equally good options which allow you to spend quality time together as a family as well as teach kids the fundamentals of counting, money and otherwise.

Math with Videos

Ever heard of something known as a multiplication rap? Well, it’s an easy and entertaining way to help your kids sing along and learn their multiplication tables in style. Also, doodles are not always just absent-minded scribbles and squiggles drawn on paper. Doodling in math by connecting dots, making binary trees and practicing the Fibonacci series are fun ways kids can practice certain mathematical concepts, be means of watching certain educational videos on sites like YouTube.

Because the only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics, as a parent you just need to make sure some form of math is incorporated into your child’s play – one of the most effective ways to do away with the otherwise inevitable summer slide.

Finger Counting - Good or Bad

To begin with, I unashamedly admit the fact that I use my fingers to count even today. Count as in, not counting on my fingers one by one, but yes, I do take a quick look at my fingers whenever a single digit calculation has to be done, just by way of habit.

And the debate goes on – shouldn’t you wean your child off from counting on her fingers as soon as possible? Naysayers who do not support finger counting put forward the following claims:

• Finger counting is an introductory skill and children should generally move ‘from the less-efficient strategies of using their fingers, to the more efficient strategies without finger use’, according to a certain mathematical development research.
• The whole calculation process slows down as a result of counting on your fingers, and hence the child is put at a disadvantage in class.
• Finger counting closes the kids’ minds to the essential skill of memorizing certain math facts.

That said and done, a recent study conducted by a team at Stanford concluded that:

• Far from being ‘babyish’, the technique is essential for mathematical achievement.
• Stopping students from using their fingers while counting could be akin to halting their mathematical development.
• Visual math is a powerful tool for all learners, especially young kids. When we work on math, our brain activity is distributed among many different networks, which include areas within the ventral and dorsal pathways, both of which are visual. Hence, our mathematical thinking is grounded in visual processing.

Now the next time your child starts to do a basic mathematical calculation on his fingers, don’t discourage her; instead do it along with her. It’s for her good only in the long run.

Live Everyday like it’s Leap Day!

‘Leap year, Leap year, When will you be?

Every FOUR years, THEN you’ll see!

You want more? We do too!

How many more can you leap to?’

This leap year rhyme has been doing the rounds lately – and why not, considering the fact that the present year 2016 is a leap year and it has come after a gap of four whole years! The other day my young son looked at me with a quizzical expression and inquired about the extra day in the month of February this year and how all the kids were talking about it. Here’s how I decided to make the explanation simple for him; perhaps it could help you too in order to explain the same to your kids.

• A leap year is different from other years as in it has 366 days instead of the usual 365 days.
• February is the month with the extra day, with 29 instead of 28 days.
• A leap year occurs every 4 years (here’s a good opportunity to test their multiplication table of 4 and ask them about the next leap year).
• February 29 is called a leap day.
• It takes the earth 365 days to orbit around the sun once - hence an earth year has 365 days in it.

While younger kids would probably be satisfied with digesting this much of information, here’s a wonderful video I discovered about leap years which would be fascinating for older kids:

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