I’m starting to write up some thoughts on the projects we’ve done in the last year. The difference between the past school year and the ones before that is that this was the first year that we weren’t home schooling. That change altered some of what I was doing with the boys, but maybe not … Continue reading Math year in review part 2 – Fold and Cut
We decided to do one more fold and cut project tonight. Our first two are here: Fold and Cut project #1 Fold and cut project #2 Tonight we decided to try to fold and cut some of the letters that Katie Steckles demonstrated at the end of the Numberphile video. My older son chose the … Continue reading Fold and cut part 3
Yesterday we saw this incredible Numberphile video: We did a really fun project this morning based on the video, too: Our One Cut Project There was much more to do, though – this activity has so many different possibilities for kids! One thing that was on my mind all day was shapes with holes. While … Continue reading The fold and cut theorem is awesome
This week I’m going to be giving a talk at the math camp at Williams college. The talk this year is going to be based on an amazing paper cutting project that I learned from James Tanton’s book Solve This: As that tweet from 2016 suggests, we’ve looked at these paper cutting ideas before: An … Continue reading Revisiting James Tanton’s paper cutting exercise
Today we revisited one of my all time favorite math projects for kids (also **revisiting**) : We did this project once before, but I don’t think the kids remembered it: An absolutely mind blowing project from James Tanton The project is relatively simple to set up – you have strips of paper and make 5 … Continue reading James Tanton’s incredible Möbius strip cutting project
I did the project below with the boys on Sunday before they went off to camp for a week. The idea wasn’t to get into heavy math, but rather just a relaxed walk through some fun shapes. We got one detail wrong in the 4th video which I was sort of kicking myself for, but … Continue reading Some beautiful geometry in a challenge problem from Alexander Bogomolny
Please note the correction at the bottom of the post A further correction – there is still an error. Ugh. This approach may not work, unfortunately . . . Saw a neat problem from Alexander Bogomolny earlier today: I actually missed the problem when it was initial posted, but saw it via Nassim Taleb’s solution: … Continue reading A night with Cut the Knot, Nassim Taleb, and some Supernova
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 … Continue reading Fold and Punch
Last night I wrote about my plans for Family Math night for grades K – 1 – that post is here: K-1 Family Math night Tonight I’m thinking about what to do for grades 2 and 3. One thing on my mind is the Collatz conjecture, but I’m worried that will not be as interesting … Continue reading Family Math night for grades 2 and 3
Saw this amazing video on the “one cut” problem from Numberphile and Katie Steckles yesterday: After watching the video, my younger son spent some time trying to make various shapes last night: That gave me the idea to try out the idea for our little Family Math project today. The first shape we tried was … Continue reading Our one cut project
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