Tag: Catriona Shearer

Sharing a Catriona Shearer geometry puzzle with my younger son – part 15

My son is really enjoying working on Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles, so after a few days off we continued with the project this afternoon. Here’s the puzzle he looked at today:

My son came up with a pretty clever solution – he explains that solution here:

After he solved the problem I had him look at the problem’s twitter thread and find a solution he liked. He chose the solution from Brenda Meshejian. This is the second time we’ve looked at one of Meshejian’s soluitons (and hopefully I’ve pronounced her name correctly this time!).

Here’s Meshejian’s solution on twitter:

Here’s my son’s explanation of this solution:

I started this set of projects because I think the combination of thinking through Shearer’s problems and then explaining a solution from the twitter thread is a great way for kids to learn about geometry. So far this idea has been a really fun way for my son to explore some fun math during the lock down.

Sharing Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles with my younger son – part 14

Catriona Shearer posted another terrific geometry puzzle today and I had my son work on it today for a project. Here’s the puzzle:

Here’s how he explained his solution:

Next I had him look through the twitter thread following the problem and find a solution that he liked. He chose this beautiful solution from David Andriana:

Here’s how he explained Andriana’s soluiton:

One of the really fun things about using Catriona Shearer’s puzzles with my son is having him explain neat solutions from twitter threads. His work with Andriana’s solution today is a great example of the educational value that Catriona’s twitter threads have for kids!

Sharing a Catriona Shearer geometry puzzle with my younger son – part 13

We’ve been having a ton of fun for the last few weeks working through some of Catriona Shearer’s amazing puzzles. Last week I saw her share an puzzle from 2018 when she was asked for some of her favorites. Here’s that puzzle:

I thought this would be a great one for my younger son to try, and he was able to solve it.

His solution is a bit computational, so we broke his explanation into two pieces. Here he explains his approach to the problem:

With his approach drawn out now, we moved on to the computations:

Now we took a look at the twitter thread from the original problem to look for a solution that son liked. He chose the solution from Sanjay Singh

This solution was similar to how my son solved the problem, but that gave him a nice opportunity to understand the problem a bit better. Here’s his explanation of Singh’s solution:

I’m really happy that Catriona shared this problem again – it is terrific. It was also great to be reminded how long she’s been sharing these puzzles – it is going to be a long time until we get through all of them 🙂

Sharing Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles with my younger son – part 12

Catriona Shearer posted a really nice geometry puzzle today:

I thought this one would be a good challenge for my son and he was able to solve it, though he had a few false starts. He explains his thought process from start to finish here:

After he finished his explanation I had him look at the twitter thread and he liked the solution from M B Patey:

Here he explains that solution and why he liked it:

I feel like a broken record, but I love these problems. Today’s was at exactly the right level for my son and made for a great project!

Sharing Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles with my younger son – part 11

Catriona Shearer shared a great puzzle this morning.

This one is a bit more difficult than others I’ve shared with my son lately, but he wanted to give it a try. He wasn’t able to solve it, but we talked about the progress me had and the ideas he had:

Next we looked at a geometric solution given by Phillip Gibbs as well as comment to Gibbs’s tweet from Dr. Rick. These tweets showed a really clever geometric solution to the problem.

Here’s what my son had to say about these solutions:

Finally, I showed my son how to see that the triangles in the picture were, indeed, 30-60-90 triangles. This is a little bit of algebra, but I thought it would be important for him to see why those triangles were there.

I really love this problem and was happy that the thread had some great geometric solutions. Even though my son wasn’t able to get this one solved all the way, I think he learned a lot working through it.

Sharing Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles with my younger son – part 10

Today Catriona Shearer posted another great geometry puzzle:

My younger son was able to solve this one and he explains his solution here:

After he finished his explanation we looked at the twitter thread for a solution he liked and he chose this one from @ricardpe:

He explained that solution here:

This is our 10th project in this series. It has been really fun to have my son solve the puzzles and then explain a solution from the twitter thread. I’m really enjoying reviewing geometry with my younger son using Catriona’s ideas!

Sharing Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles with my younger son – part 9

For part 9 of our series with Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles, we used the puzzle that she posted this morning:

My son was able to solve this problem and here’s how he explained his solution:

After he talked through his solution we went back to the twitter thread for the puzzle and he found a solution he liked:

This is actually the 2nd solution we’ve used from Amaresh G S – here’s how my son explained it:

Another great puzzle – I’m really enjoying this series!

Sharing Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles with my younger son – Part 8

When I started sharing Catriona Shearer’s puzzles with my younger son I was excited for him try out the challenges and hopefully learn a bit from the twitter threads. I also hoped that seeing some of the clever solutions might inspired him to come of with a clever solution of his own. Tonight was that night!

Here’s the puzzle we looked at:

Here’s his solution which thrilled me!

After he gave his solution we looked at the twitter thread for the puzzle and he like the solution from our friend Steve Phelps:

Here’s what he had to say about Steven’s animation which he thinks is “very cool”:

This was a really fun project – I was happy to see the creativity in my son’s solution.

Sharing a Catriona Shearer geometry puzzle with my younger son part 7

This is part 7 of our series of walking through some of Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles. I’m really happy with how this is going and how her puzzles are helping my son learn about geometry.

Here’s the puzzle we looked at today:

My son’s solution was pretty heavy on computation, but he realized that there was an easier approach after he finished explaining the computation. That realization was nice to see!

The solution we looked at from the problem’s twitter thread was from Amerish G S. This solution was similar to what my son had done, but different enough that he learned a bit talking through it. That also make me happy – I love how great the twitter threads are following Shearer’s puzzles!

Sharing Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles with my younger son – part 6`

I’ve been sharing Catriona Shearer’s geometry puzzles with my younger son for a few days now. Each day I have him look at a puzzle and either present his solution if he can solve it, or just talk about what he thought about the puzzle if he can’t solve it all the way.

For today’s project we jused the puzzle Shearer posted today:

https://twitter.com/Cshearer41/status/1250336155926548481%20

He was not able to solve this puzzle in the general setting, but still he had some ideas:

After he gave his thoughts I had him find a solution in the twitter thread that he liked. He chose the solution from Jane Miller:

He understood this solution and did a nice job talking through it: