We have great events coming up in the next few weeks. Tomorrow, March 13th,
the mathematics specialist from Mangahigh, Chris Green, will give us a tour
of this growing project and answer questions.
Saturday, March 20th the conversation will be centered on Ethnomathematics.
Lawrence Shirley, the organizer of the fourth international ethnomathematics
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Maria, thank you for this email. Very important thoughts.
Michael

Behalf Of Maria Droujkova
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 8:02 AM
To: naturalmath@googlegroups.com

There is an interesting, if bombastic (well, it's cracked.com), essay on the
mechanisms of game addiction. This paragraph caught my eye, in relation to
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There is an interesting, if bombastic (well, it's cracked.com), essay on the
mechanisms of game addiction. This paragraph caught my eye, in relation to
the recent parent question about meaning and significance of math in
children's lives.
"As shocking as this sounds, a whole lot of the "guy who failed all of his
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Laura, thank you for the story! I am accompanying it with some pictures and
links.
This is a part of an ongoing conversation among several math activity
designers. You can see the picture of the cereal box, as well as other
Multiplication Towers, here:
[link] I hope some of people
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Hi everyone. Internet problems down here. Turns out the first version of my writeup made it, and I didn't know it. Sorry for sending two versions.
______________________________ __
To: naturalmath@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, March 8, 2010 9:06:48 AM
Hi everyone. I am on the road, so this is going to be a bit short.
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Hi everyone. I am on the road, so this is going to be a bit short.
Maria planned a whale of an activity last Thursday. It involved a 5 x 5 grid, a cereal box and bamboo skewers.
The kids made hash marks every cm for 30 cm along 25 skewers. Maria pre-punched holes in on a 5x5 grid in a cereal box. The kids inserted the skewers through the holes so that they poked through but did not yet show the hash marks. This contraption became an experiential multiplication/systems teaching tool.
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Hi everyone. I am on the road, so this is going to be a bit short.
Maria planned a whale of an activity last Thursday. It involved a 5 x 5 grid, a cereal box and bamboo skewers.
The kids made hash marks every cm for 30 cm along 25 skewers. Maria pre-punched holes in on a 5x5 grid in a cereal box. The kids inserted the skewers through the holes so that they poked through but did not yet show the hash marks. This contraption became an experiential multiplication/systems teaching tool.
Read more..

On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Hope and Luke McMullan <
I'd like to note this as an excellent example of, "Where do Club activities
come from?"
Every branch of math and science has its own beautiful, quirky and precise
language. This activity can happen around any term! When a neat term comes
up, I ask Club members to repeat it out loud - and some groups like to
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Lizzie's 4 and a half, and not terribly interested in math activities or
games for the sake of doing "mathy" things (love that expression, Erin)...
Perhaps for the sake of fun... but even then, she prefers to role-play with
friends and toys, or to do crafts, or to bake. So when I think of the
meaning of math in her life, I think pretty basic... (but maybe it also
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Sounds like a good idea! I like the grid photos. Thanks, Sue
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I like your dream Maria---and it sounds like a good activity.
We were actually talking about this in the car today as Delta asks what a
'version' is (i think Luke misheard her and was wondering how to explain..)
This was part of a string of words she was asking us to explain. I love
doing this as it stretches my mind to make up a kid friendly definition and
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Sue, thank you for your story! We will be wrapping up the current Grid topic
next week, and stories will go into a book about it!
The first activity, Multiplication Towers, is a very rich activity which
several math educators found quite rewarding for their students, and
strangely fascinating for themselves. I put together a page documenting some
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Nice write up Sue.
I extracted your paragraph which illustrates WHY adults should NEVER insert THEIR opinion of what is happening BUT should always ask, as Maria says "open" and as I like to add is 'leading' or 'guided inquiry' questions. Regretfully, it is your comment that led them astray. You state that they had FUN pursuing your simile, so it should not be surprising that they came to a mis-perception at which you express puzzlement.They may have wound up thinking the same on their own BUT it appears to me that they really listened and took to heart what you said. That why one must be extremely careful in what one says to the younguns. Everything has to be well thought out in advance so as to not mislead them with any spontaneous comments.
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Thank you for the great idea. I will forward this email to my daughter whose
son, Avi, 7, was pretty aggressive in the toy stores when he was 4 or 5 or
6. He just used to say, "I buy this and this and this" and put everything in
a shopping cart.
Michael

Behalf Of Erin Henry
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2010 4:28 PM
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We had a full math club this past Friday with five kids (ages 4-6) and moms
participating, plus 4 younger siblings!
We began with a LEGO activity:
1 - Maria brought out the bin of LEGO pieces and asked the kids to find
shapes that matched the one she was holding up. It was a small little
square LEGO piece. All the kids proceeded to pick out this same shape in
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