Browsed by
Category: Geometry

The Artistic Side of Math – Pointillism

The Artistic Side of Math – Pointillism

Comments 0 Comment

Tying in pointillism are during a unit on fractions, decimals, and percents is perfect! How? It begins with painter Georges Seurat. Seurat was a post-impressionist painter who painted by placing tiny, preceise brush strokes of different colors close to one another so they blend at a distance. I share with the students his painting The Circus and we discuss the patience it probably took to paint the whole thing using tiny dots! I then pass out loupes and colored comics…

Read More Read More

The Artistic Side of Math – Spiral Geometry

The Artistic Side of Math – Spiral Geometry

Comments 0 Comment

Mathematics and nature often go hand-in-hand. In this lesson, students study the spirals of the nautilus and tie it in to a numerical sequence called the Fibonacci sequence. They use the sequence to re-design the nautilus using home-made compasses. I begin the lesson by showing the first few terms of the Fibonacci sequence and have students work together to see if they can figure out the pattern and the next few numbers in the sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5,…

Read More Read More

The Artistic Side of Math – Scaling

The Artistic Side of Math – Scaling

Comments 0 Comment

Ancient Africans in Egypt enlarged pictures by using nets of squares. In this fun project, students re-construct a smaller picture into a very large picture. In mathematics, we call this dilation which is a type of trasformation studied in geometry. This is an activity I do with fourth graders and above. I first begin with a picture that I know the students will have fun re-constructing. Hence…Sponge Bob. Depending on the number of students who will be working on one…

Read More Read More

Teaching Kids Multiplication Facts, Factors, Primes, Composites

Teaching Kids Multiplication Facts, Factors, Primes, Composites

Comments 0 Comment

See how simple objects like tiles, stickers, rubber stamps, dice, and graph paper help teach students important concepts in number theory: factors, primes, composites, and square numbers…not to mention the great reinforcement of multiplication facts. Grades 2 – 5 To get the pdf version, click here. If you do any of these activities with your kids/students, let me know how it goes!

Math Around Us

Math Around Us

Comments 0 Comment

If we take the time to notice our surroundings, I think we may be surprised at just how much math we have in our every day environment.  Take the photo to the left.  It’s something most kids are familiar with.  But do they know that it represents the multiplication problem 4 x 6.  If they count the number of rows (4) and then multiply by the number of columns (6), they can quickly discover how many total eggs there are….

Read More Read More