[comp.society.women] Making math fun

skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Patricia Roberts) (11/06/88)

From: Elizabeth Hinkelman  <eliz@cs.rochester.edu>

Moira just asked how to make math fun for her and for an 8-year-old.
Here's what was fun for me:

When I went to Montessori preschool, from age 3-6, there were these really neat
toys.  Like strings of beads grouped by 1s, twos, 10s, &c, that you could use
to visualize really big numbers. Or solid models of platonic solids. Or
rectangular bits of colored plastic which one was taught to arrange in rows,
and which were colored in a way that highlights Pascal's triangle.  Of course
I didn't understand Pascal's triangle then, but I sure could visualize it
ten years later when it came up again.  Montessori materials like those
were well-made, beautiful to handle, and very expensive.  But you could make 
your own equivalents, given the ideas.  And there are at least some that
are meant for home instruction which were cheaper; I should ask my mom for
the address.  One could visit a Montessori school, in a city.

I think an eight-year-old could see the intuition of using rectangles
to approximate the area under a curve, even if there was no patience to
grind through the numbers.  A fun application of that? Maybe measuring the
area of a round plate with square brownies, recutting them for the successive
approximations?   Actually I think baking would be a good domain for all
kinds of measuring, doubling recipes, playing with liquids,....

I suppose the main thing is to have a meaningful problem to solve --
"count money!" says the person reading over my shoulder.  If we drive 30,
how long will it take to get home?  How about if we drive 60?


(-: (-: I guess I really like math! (-: (-:

E (let's see, two hamsters this year...) liz

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Arpa:	eliz@cs.rochester.edu (Elizabeth Hinkelman)
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USnail:	Department of Computer Science, U. of Rochester, N.Y. 14627