I was originally planning on using Anna Weltman’s Loop-de-Loop activity for the Grade 2-3 Family Math night, but the 4th grade classes at the school actually did the activity already. I’m happy and sad about that, but I don’t want to spoil it for the future if the school wants to keep using it. It is really fun.
Instead, having just bought Patterns of the Universe, I think I’ll replace Weltman’s activity with a coloring activity.
Our two projects with Patterns of the Universe are here (with a link to the first one in the link below):
Patterns of the Universe Part 2
I’m also thinking of giving away a copy of the book at the event. For the coloring activities I’ll use the ones I also plan to use at the K-1 night from Math Munch:
Coloring sheets from Math Munch
I think this will be a good intro activity and also allow the people who are running late to not really be lost as the arrive.
Topic 2 will be unchanged – the Fold and Cut theorem. Hopefully we’ll be able to introduce the topic with Katie Steckles’ awesome video:
Here are some of the projects we did after seeing this video:
The topic that I’d like to keep in my back pocket if we have extra time is the problem we studied after I saw Larry Guth lecture at MIT:
Larry Guth’s “No Rectangles” problem
This project is pretty open-ended, especially in terms of amount of time needed. The problem with a 3×3 square is interesting all by itself (and accessible to 2nd and 3rd graders). The 4×4 is harder, but would be fun to talk about with a large group – I’m sure the kids will have lots of different ideas. The nice thing about this problem is that it gives kids (and parents!) a taste of the kinds of problem math researchers think are interesting.
Mike's Math Page 