This is part of the Teaching Math with Picture Books series.
Check out this activity you can do with What’s Your Angle Pythagoras?
Will you do it? What else can you do? Tell us in the comments.
And share this on Twitter!
Tag: geometry
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Egg Hunt Shows Natural Math Ability
I saw natural math ability yesterday!
K8 was hunting Easter eggs at Mawmaw & Pawpaw’s house. She saw an egg inside the sandbox. As she reached into the box she realized the egg was too far away.
She was standing where the footprints are. The egg was where the striped egg is:
She needed to step inside the sandbox.
The “easy” answer was to step inside the sandbox. But she wanted no part of the gritty sand.
With no hesitation, she moved from her location, around the sandbox to the new spot:
This took some effort because she had to squat to get under the ladder. But she had seen that avoiding the sand was possible if she accessed the egg from the other side.
She recognized and compared distances!
With no vocabulary or formal training (indeed she’s 2 1/2 years old) she identified perpendicular distance! She assessed which side of the square sandbox would minimize this distance. And she acted on that assessment.
It’s normal for parents to believe their children are especially smart, gifted or brilliant. I believe that all children are these things.
Kids have a natural math ability. And so do you.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments and make sure to share this story with your twitter network!
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Math Picture Book: Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland
This is part of the Teaching Math with Picture Books series.
The math picture book Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland appealed to me because of the punny title – and the promise of wordplay was certainly fulfilled!
This fun little gem of a book is only one in a series of Sir Cumference books by Cindy Neuschwander.
Enjoying the puns with the math…
Radius is the son of Sir Cumference and Lady Di of Ameter. (See what I mean – the puns start on page one of this picture book!)
He decides he’s old enough to take a quest and learns from his mentor, Sir D’grees (it’s side splitting, I tell ya!) about the missing King Lell.
Radius is given a “medallion” by his parents to help him on his quest. No one really knows what the medallion is for, but it seems it might be helpful.
Or at least cool to have while on a quest.
As a treat to the reader, a laminated version of this medallion is included in the back of the picture book. It looks like this:
More punny math fills the pages!
Angles, degrees and all things geometry show up. And Neuschwander doesn’t write them out loud until the end, when Radius starts naming them.
Here you see the steep “cute” roofs of the village in the valley near the Mountains of Obtuse.
Husband enjoyed paying attention, looking at the pictures, and trying to guess which person or thing would end up as a namesake for a geometry term. I think he enjoyed it more than K8!
It’s worth a read – for fun or as a lesson!
Read this picture book to enjoy (as we did) or use it to introduce or enhance your geometry lessons.
And the final pun is the best!
I won’t spoil it for you, though. Get it at the library or find Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland online. Read it. Enjoy it. You’ll see I’m right. (No pun intended!)
Share your thoughts in the comments and make sure to tell your PLN on twitter!
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Rectangles and Triangles – How They Compare
I have been working with eHow.com to get some common math questions answered. One of the questions was, “How are the areas of a rectangle and triangle with the same base and height related?”
Curiously, all rectangles can be cut into triangles. And all triangles can be doubled to make a rectangle. Watch this video – and then get out the construction paper, scissors and glue.
Grab a kid and have some fun watching them discover!
Have thoughts on this? Share them in the comments. And don’t forget to share it on twitter/X.
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Magna-Tiles – Must-Have Magnetic Shapes
Daughter got a set of Magna-Tiles geometric shapes from her aunt for Christmas. I distracted her long enough to get some great photos so I could write about this amazing toy.
When teaching math, you pull out any shapes you can from anywhere in the house. And sometimes stuff you can buy trumps all the other stuff. Not often – the home holds tons of great geometric manipulatives – but sometimes.
Magna-Tiles are better than anything in the house!
The magna-tiles are clear, so they’re pretty and you can shine light through them.
Also they’re magnetic – so they stick together and stick on the fridge. Great storage for fast usage!
And then – here’s the best part – they’re geometric shapes! Two sizes of squares, three sizes and shapes of triangles.
You’d think that being geometrical was the first requirement. But really – clear, pretty and magnetic go a long way!
Get these fabulous shapes at Valtech! Co. on Amazon.com, or at your local teacher/homeschool supply store.
Do you have some? Do you want some? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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![[50 Word Friday] Math in Christmas Lights](http://mathfour.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/MathFourChristmasLightsFI-1.jpg)
[50 Word Friday] Math in Christmas Lights
When looking at Christmas lights with a child, you see things you might never have seen before.
Lights around a window make a rectangle. Lights that droop might be a parabolic or catenary curve.
And some people hang their Christmas lights in triangles!
What shapes are in your Christmas lights?
This article is a part of the 50 Word Friday series. Learn more about this strange, limited writing style here…
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Math Teacher Interview Questions
At 8:30 PM CST tonight, October 20, 2011, Natural Math is hosting a presentation about a new book called Modern Math for Elementary Schoolers by Oleg Gleizer. It’s a Creative Commons book on advanced math for elementary school children! (So it’s free! Get it here.)
Gleizer’s inspiration is from a similar situation in which I currently find myself: To what school should I send my child? Of course my answer is The Bon Crowder School at Home. Alas, Husband believes there’s no reason to fully homeschool if there great schools out there.
So are there great schools out there?
I started reading the book and stopped on page 4. Gleizer is explaining his method of finding math teachers. He asked math teachers of potential schools these two questions in the interviews:
- Given a straight line and a point away from it, how would you draw another straight line passing through the point and parallel to the original line, using a compass and straightedge as tools?
- How would you draw a four-dimensional (4D) cube?
Of course, I immediately began to wonder if I was good enough to answer these questions myself!
I got the answer to #1 after some thought, and am pondering #2. I’m refraining from reading on, as I want to come up with my own answer before I read anything else. But I’ll be attending the presentation this evening.
What about you? Can you join us?
P.S. I’ll have to wait to post the answer to #1 tomorrow, as I have discovered that I don’t have a compass. How on earth can you teach math without that?! How embarrassing! So I’m off to Walmart right now to get one.
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[50 Word Friday] Cars Driving in Circles
Daughter wanted to play. I wanted her to learn. We did both.
She learned:
- You can sit in the center of a circle.
- Cars drive on the circumference of the circle.
- Cars driving at the same speed can continue to be diametrically opposed.
Learn and play – the best way!
Learn more about 50 Word Friday here.
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