Icosahedron from picnic supplies

This was such a fun video to watch! This guy makes an icosahedron from plastic plates, and then from plastic cups - and one more from just plastic and duct tape.

It can serve as a fun summer math project for kids who love explorations, cutting, gluing, building, and that sort of stuff!

He is hilarious! See the video:


Video from Makezine.com

Read the instructions for the icosahedrons

Find out what is an icosahedron

A Mathematical Trip

Are you perhaps doing any car trips this summer?

Do you realize what a great opportunity it is to teach some real-life math to your children? They need to learn how to calculate the cost of a trip, based on the miles driven, the gas mileage of the car, and the price of gasoline.

So today I want to highlight something sent to me by a fellow homeschooling mom, visitor to my site. She uses math a lot within real-life situations, and recently made a geography-math worksheet for her daughter about calculating the length and cost of a trip their grandparents were doing.

She allowed me to share that worksheet WITH YOU... so here it is (MS Word 7) and here (Word 6). Right-click to save.

See also a travel distance calculator to help you figure out distances.

I quote:

"It's funny, but even with all the resources we currently have on hand, I find that we spend more time on real-life math (such as calculating tip when we eat out). In fact, I just created a "worksheet" (not really, it's just a crude Word document) to cover Geography and Math. It is based on a road trip that my mother is currently making to come and visit us. Each day, we add on to the previous day's calculations. ... The math is actually more advanced than my daughter is currently doing in her "normal" classwork, but I have found that by relating the math to something that has a real-life element, she seems to grasp the concept pretty well. In this particular case, I've told her that it's important for us to know how much the entire trip costs (in terms of gas) and how long the trip takes so that we can plan a reciprocal trip (which she would dearly love to do)!

My initial thought on your worksheets (keeping in mind that we haven't actually used any of them yet and I've only looked over a few), is that they ONLY encompass math (though the same can be said of all the math curricula I have reviewed so far). My preference would be to have math "bundled" with other subjects: Science, Literature, History or (like I attempted to do with my worksheet) Geography.

I homeschool, so I love it when I can accomplish several goals at once. Unit studies tend to cover several core subjects including math, but the primary emphasis is on the central topic. I think that it would be really neat to see a curriculum that was BASED on math and then used other subjects to support the concepts. Just a thought..."

Lori Nettles

High school math after algebra, geometry, and consumer math?

Question:

"I am a homeschooling mom, with two children still at home. We use Switched On Schoolhouse almost exclusively. My son will be a senior this fall. He took Algebra 1 and geometry but was against taking trig. I had him take Consumer Math this year and I am trying to find him something for his senior year. He is not leaning towards college, but perhaps a tech school. ANY advice you can give will be greatly appreciated! Thanks!"

Well, if you don't want to do trig or algebra 2, consider the book Mathematics, a Human Endeavor: A Textbook for Those Who Think They Don't Like the Subject.

This book by Harold Jacobs covers a wide range of mathematical topics, aiming to show students how interesting math can be. The topics include for example number tricks, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, number sequences, functions and their graphs, large numbers and logarithms, polygons and symmetry, mathematical curves, probability, and topology.

Jacobs always gives you problems where you have to investigate and find out patterns. He aims to minimize the usage of formulas, shows all kinds of interesting ideas and tricks, and thus lets the student fall in love with mathematics.

More info:

Harold Jacobs Mathematics Human Endeavor Curriculum

Review by TOS

Review of Harold Jacobs books by Susan Richman.

Mathematics, a Human Endeavor at Amazon.

Math readers

I've had some fun building this page about math readers, or "living math" books for my main site. The list is not terribly long yet, but it will grow, I'm sure.

I discovered that Amazon has all kinds of new "widgets" available to promote their products. What do you think of this? It is a slideshow featuring MathStart readers by Stuart J. Murphy. Hover your mouse over it:



Math story books offer children an interesting way to learn math concepts, to get interested in mathematics, and to explore some fascinating topics outside of the main curriculum. It is one way to bring math to "life". Kids are almost sure to enjoy it.

On my page, I list for example Cryptoclub, a fascinating storybook that teaches how to encrypt and decrypt secrete messages, or The Adventures of Penrose - THE MATHEMATICAL CAT, in which you will encounter many fascinating mathematical topics from fractals to tessellations, or many books for little kids.

I was thinking putting all of that on a blogpost, too, but it's just "duplicate content". Maybe I'll feature a few of them here soon.

I realize not everyone can buy many math readers on top of their regular school books, but try find some of these books in your local library!

Math in books (not math books!)

I just recieved an email from a publishing company. They want to send me a few books to review and then list on my site.

I've written reviews before, a whole bunch. I started my "reviewer career"... well, in school of course. We wrote book reviews, as I'm sure you did too. I don't think mine were that special. But somehow the role of reviewer has fallen to my lap nowadays.

For example, recently I just finished the review of YourTeacher and MathScore.

The new books that this email was about are

• Crimes and Mathdemeanors
  A collection of short detective stories for young adults who are interested in applying high school level mathematics and physics to solve mysteries.


• The Cryptoclub: Using Mathematics to Make and Break Secret Codes.
  Join the Cryptokids as they apply basic mathematics to make and break secret codes. This book has many hands-on activities that have been tested in both classrooms and informal settings.

I haven't seen these yet. The reason I put them in this blogpost is because it sounds like these books are examples of math in a somewhat entertaining or interesting context, aimed at high school or middle-school level.

You know, to so many people math remains a "dull" school subject only. And that is so far from truth. It is some of those same people, I'm sure, who confess to the "I'm bad at math and that's okay" attitude as mentioned in the previous blogpost.

I, for sure, intend for my kids to learn the beauty of math, to learn about some of these interesting subjects such as basic cryptography, to learn even of math history.

There exist lots more books like those above, "living math" books - books where mathematical concepts are at the centerpiece of the story.

I encourage you to do something similar. Don't just use the curriculum. Go to the library, and find some of these kind of books (or buy them). It shows kids so much more about math, inspires them about math, and gets rid of these silly attitudes of math being boring or not worth learning.

Because all in all, we can then appreciate mathematics so much more (and its Creator). People are awed by the animal kingdom and appreciate the beauty of this Earth and its plants, its geography, the planets, space etc. But the same applies to math.