Math to Soothe the Foodie's Heart

The inevitable side effect of being a foodie is that it slips into every part of your life. Especially when you are a Math lover and a food lover, you will definitely notice how food allegories will slip into your teaching techniques. Remember all the problems that start with that strange person called Frank who had 50 billion apples and had to give away 2/59ths of it? Remember all my lectures about how you can teach addition and subtraction using Cheez-Its? It comes with the territory.

A quick google shows that I’m not the first one to have such brilliant crossover ideas (unfortunately!) but some of them put my ideas to shame. Look at these beauties.

Venn Diagram Pizza – Bacon and mushroom on the Left, Red Pepper on the right, flavor explosion bang in the middle!

Menger Sponge Cake – Cubes cut from cubes cut from cubes

Candy Corn Sierpinski Triangle – A triangle within a triangle within a triangle?

Pythagorean Crackers – Triangles are my favorite shape

And my personal favorite, Dodecahedron Apples – A polygon with 12 flat faces

Which ones do you like? 

Blast from the Past: Lessons in History for Kids

If you thought learning history was all about memorizing facts, think again. My kids surprised me recently when they asked me about the Renaissance. This caught me by surprise because they are still a long way away from Renaissance. On probing, I found out that they came across this while playing one of the penguin games that featured paintings from the Renaissance period.

This made me realize that anything, even history, can be turned into an exciting learning opportunity. It is not just a story about people, places and events from the past. It tells us how the past has shaped the present. All that we have today is a result of what happened.

Take for example, the subject history when taught in classrooms with dates to be memorized was boring. This is the past and we have learnt from it, understood why it didn’t work, and have come up with new ways to make the subject exciting.

So what are the ways in which history can be made fun for kids?

“Point Park, Lookout Mountain TN” by framechaser23 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Games

Apart from the penguin games I talked about earlier that sparked an interest in Renaissance in my kids, there are many other apps that make history interesting. For historical figures and the American Revolution there is Ansel and Clair: Paul Revere's Ride, for battles and wars there are Marie Antoinette & The Independence War and Empire Total War, and for politics you can consider The Political Machine 2012.

Movies

If your kids love watching movies, there are plenty that you could show them like Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Gettysburg, The Great Escape, The King's Speech, Lawrence of Arabia and Saving Private Ryan, John Adams (mini series), JFK, Forrest Gump and Gangs of New York. I would recommend you watch the movies before the kids do or sit with them during them, as they may not all be suitable for younger children. Not all movies portray history accurately, and that is something you should keep in mind too.

Museums

“National Museum of Natural History” by angela n. is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Take it from reel to real, and visit the National Museum of American History or American Museum of Natural History! Field trips to nearby historical towns and museums are great ways to engage kids in learning history. Your own neighborhood may have historical buildings that you could visit. By setting up the Field Trip app on your smartphone, you can receive alerts when you are in the vicinity of interesting places that are categorized under Historic Places & Events.

Books

If we must bring books into this, why not get kids to read biographies and autobiographies? Even better, give them a choice of historical figures, if possible from the era you are teaching them about, and ask them to choose the person about whom they would like to read. It is more likely they will take an interest in reading, if they play a part in choosing what they want to read.

But wait, it need not stop at reading. Why not pit kids against each other with a game of 20 questions? With each one assuming the character of a person they have read about and the other trying to guess the name of the historical figure.

Act!

Kids can take it to the next level and act the characters out. They can also put together a few easy costumes. It is a whole lotta fun! Kids can enact a scene from the life of Abraham Lincoln, Alexander the Great, Amelia Earhart, Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong. The latter got us a ringside view of the moonwalk! You can also find out if there are any history buffs who gather together for battle reenactments and watch them.

These are just a few ways to put the spark back in history and they sure beat the textbook route, don’t they?

Mathematical!

Adventure Time is a big enough phenomenon for you to have heard of it. If you’re still seeing stars, this might jog your memory.

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Jake the dog and Finn the human are the reason my kids love Math. Earlier it was moan this, tantrum that when we took out our Math syllabus. It got so loud when the worksheets came out that it completely threw my teaching style. I learnt a lesson then –Flustered Parent = Even More Flustered Child. I think trying to navigate the dark recesses of Math is difficult enough without both of you being in a bad mood.

Luckily, I didn’t have to go looking for solutions. Adventure Time found them. It’s a story of a boy and his dog and they go on adventures completely unrelated to Math. Some of the content is for older kids – I think Jake and Finn are meant for preteen ages and above. So how did the kids take Math away from a show like that?

Simple, it is Finn’s favorite catch phrase. When the monster has been defeated, when an adventure has been successful, when the day has been saved – the adventure duo, Finn and Jake, use Math terms. The kids most favorite one, of course, is MATHEMATICAL!

When the kids suddenly showed an interest in a subject for no logical reason, I didn’t complain. This mom did a little happy dance. And said the words!

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