I’ve been spending a little time over the last week getting ready to run the Family Math nights at my younger son’s school. There are 5 nights – one for each of the grades K-5 (with the grade 4 and 5 night combined for some reason).
The way the nights run is that there are a bunch of intro activities for kids (and parents!) to do as they arrive and then 2 or 3 longer projects over the next hour. Three boxes filled with the intro activities from prior years were handed to me when I agreed to run Family Math night this year – and some of these activities are really great. For instance, there was this amazing coincidence when Anna Weltman tweeted the “H puzzle” this past weekend:
There was also a great activity called “Fold and Punch”:
I’m extra excited about this activity because one of the longer activities that I’m doing with the 2nd and 3rd graders uses Katie Steckles’ amazing video about the Fold and Cut theorem:
Here’s a link that has the 3 projects that we after watching Steckles’s video:
Today I tried out the fold and punch activity with my 4th grade son. Here’s how it went:
Also, he kept working and finished the remaining 4 patterns when the camera was off. The way he did the last pattern was pretty clever. Hopefully you can see the folds he used, especially the one down the diagonal of the paper:
How did he get only 3 holes with those three folds? Well . . . half a punch 🙂
I can’t wait to see how both the fold and punch and fold and cut activities go with the 2nd and 3rd graders – such fun projects 🙂
Mike's Math Page 