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 -- Arpa: eliz@cs.rochester.edu (Elizabeth Hinkelman) UUCP: ...{rocksvax|allegra|decvax}!rochester!eliz USnail: Department of Computer Science, U. of Rochester, N.Y. 14627