Last Monday, just 7 days ago, two things happened. Our area of North Carolina got hit with a late winter storm (hopefully, the last one for the season) and Maria Droujkova’s interview appeared in The Atlantic. Guess which of these two events had a greater effect on us. Hint: it wasn’t the storm. The Article […]
Fluency or Complexity
I am very proud of my 6-year old and the math discoveries he makes. Two days ago he came up with a proof that zero is an even number. Yesterday he built something he called “a square that has volume” (a cube), then connected 4 of them into a larger cube. And today, well before […]
Posted in Grow
Math Goggles #11 – Just Listen
All the Math Goggles challenges so far had to do with noticing math with your eyes. But for this week’s challenge, let’s try to just listen. Let’s listen to the math in what our children talk about. I don’t mean like when we ask them what they did today in preschool, kindergarten or school. And […]
Posted in Grow
What Would You Rather Have – Commutative Property Game
Is 2*3 different from 3*2? My answer used to be “But of course! Don’t you know the commutative property?” Now, after following Malke Rosenfeld’s exploration of multiplication, I answer it with a lot more non-committal “it depends“. And I notice more and more examples when even though quantitatively, 3*2=2*3 and 8*1=1*8 and 3*5=5*3, qualitatively you […]
Posted in Grow
