Mixing In Math

Priya Mascarenhas (Santa Clara Reads) and I attended a workshop on utilizing math in library programs. Funded in part and supported by the National Science Foundation, the objective is to have children begin thinking about math concepts at a very early age, instead of fearing or despising math as a whole in their later educational years. The staff of "Mixing in Math" is very helpful and will find a way for you to incorporate math skills into programs you would never have thought possible. For example, before we went to a performance of "Cinderella," they advised that the families estimate foot sizes and then use rulers and actually make and compare measurements. The staff will e-mail you with suggestions for whatever program you have in mind. If you can take part in a workshop, Priya and I, wholly recommend that you do.

For Halloween, I followed the following advice with slight modifications:

Many Seeds - We read the book How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin. One of the older kids first rolled his eyes, thinking it was going to be a baby book, but he ended up in the middle of the group, really drawn in by the book. It wasn't pumpkin season, so I used fruits (apples, peppers, mango, papaya, honeydew, lemon, kiwi). With the kiwi we scooped the center and estimated. We did a lot of estimating. They came up with ways to group the seeds, and multiplied by the number of groups. They first made groups of a certain number, like 50, and then they made groups that looked like they had that number of seeds. The counting wasn’t exact except for apples and mangoes. (They were surprised that the mango had only one.) I had two of each fruit and they estimated whether the larger one would have more than the smaller. We also estimated how many seeds per fruit. I’d made a chart so they put the info onto the chart. They made a bar graph with the number of seeds per fruit. Some of them had never had some of the fruits – one had never tried honeydew, and he didn’t even know what it looked like. He loved it. They loved the program and fruit is a great incentive. They estimated, divided, counted, analyzed. At the end we talked about what type of math they did. They said dividing, multiplying, etc. I mentioned graphing. The first & second graders didn’t know what a bar graph is. The older kids taught the younger kids how to do it. They showed them the line at the top and how to do the column.

A while back, we had kids estimate how much two different pumpkins weighed. Lots of pumpkin math! Kids lifted things in the room, including one kid who lifted his sister.

For additional info: http://mixinginmath.terc.edu