BugFest, artistic lapware, Ask&Tell Hub: Newsletter August 30

Posted on August 30, 2013 by

I am Moby Snoodles, and this is my newsletter. I love to hear from you at moby@moebiusnoodles.com

Moby Snoodles

Book news

We are crowd-translating Moebius Noodles into many languages. First, volunteers translate the text. Next comes copy editing. Then the layout, and publishing. The Persian translation is in the layout stage – hard to do because the text goes right-to-left. Hebrew, 45% translated, will have the same challenges. The Russian crew is now copy editing. If you would like to join the multi-lingual fun, write us or jump right in at the crowd-translating platform: http://crowdin.net/project/MoebiusNoodles

Three games from the book appeared on the local TV station blog as back-to-school activities: Real Multiplication Tables, Function Machines, and Fractal Art.

WOW! Multiplication course

The first few dozen people signed up and started the first task at the course hub. The two main goals are to help participants explore multiplication, and to jump-start casual local Math Circles. The course begins September 9th. More information about the course here: https://naturalmath.com/wowmultiplication/

Picture: two pages from the Moebius Noodles book.

Blogs and networks

Maria Droujkova and Yelena McManaman presented the “Baby algebra, toddler calculus” talk at the Homeschool Conference 2013. You can see the full recording or just the slides.

What do you think of mnemonics like PEMDAS? Discuss this and other questions at the Ask and Tell Hub! Yesterday, Susie wrote:

I am so glad to read this. I thought I might be obstinate by opposing using PEMDAS (made better by Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally???) instead of the reasoning – my thinking is the “tightness” of the bond of multiplication vs. addition and parentheses superseding the others. I am distressed at how often I see FOIL and SOH CAH TOA. I have had students I was tutoring or substituting object to me encouraging them to think without these. Thanks for the support!

Moebius Noodles will have a table at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences BugFest, a huge celebration of arthropods. We call it Bugs in your Math. We will invite visitors to participate in hands-on exploration of math found in bugs, such as symmetry, tessellation, and fractals. Please email us if you will be there on September 21 and want to help, or if you have ideas for bugs in math (or math in bugs).

Once in a while, we greet a new fan of our Facebook Page with a card about number curiosities. Here is the card our 551st fan got, for example. I love this game, and I am learning a lot about numbers. Carryless? How playful!

From the #Lapware department, explore symmetry with your toddler through the Weave Silk app. I also use it myself to have a quiet, meditative break for a couple of minutes.

Sharing

You are welcome to share the contents of this newsletter online or in print. You can also remix and tweak anything as you wish, as long as you share your creations on the same terms. Please credit MoebiusNoodles.com

More formally, we distribute all Moebius Noodles content under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license: CC BY-NC-SA