Day: November 16, 2015

Patrick Honner’s Geometry Problem Part 2

This morning we worked on a project based on a geometry problem that Patrick Honner tweeted yesterday.  Here’s the tweet:

And here’s the project:

Patrick Honner’s Geometry Problem

During the day today I saw this tweet about the problem from Henri Picciotto:

I was not familiar with “turtle geometry” so thank goodness for the second half of the tweet! It looked like an interesting idea and I tried it out with both of the kids when they got home from school.

Wow!! What a great way to introduce some new ideas about angles to the boys by getting them to think about a problem that they’d already solved in a slightly different way.

I’m sorry these are longer than usual (especially the video with my younger son), but I just let the camera run until we got to the end.

Here’s my older son’s thoughts:

And here are my younger son’s thoughts:

So, a really great idea from Henri Picciotto on Twitter. I’m really happy that I had the chance to explore “turtle geometry” with both kids tonight 🙂

Patrick Honner’s angle problem

Last night Patrick Honner posted this introductory geometry problem on Twitter:

I was looking for a problem to talk through with each of the kids this morning and this one fit the bill perfectly. It is a nice review problem for my older son and a nice way to (perhaps) introduce some new ideas to my younger son.

Also, the watching the two approaches to solving the problems is a nice illustration of the difference in approach that kids gain with a little experience (my older son is 2 years older than my younger son).

Here’s my older son’s approach to the problem. As this is more of a review problem for him, my goal is to have him carefully explain all of his steps:

Here’s my younger son’s approach. This is definitely not a review problem for him since he’s seen only a little bit of geometry. He knows a few basic ideas about angles and triangles, though, and he puts those ideas to use in his solution. The problem provided a nice opening for us to talk informally about angles and parallel lines, which was nice:

So, a luckily-timed tweet from Patrick Honner led to two nice conversations this morning. People sometimes look at me like I have four heads when I talk about all of the great math stuff that people share on Twitter, but here’s yet another example that led to some good conversations this morning!