Multiplication Explorer, Citizen Science, the year in retrospect: Newsletter December 18, 2014
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Happy holidays from Natural Math!
In this newsletter:
- Multiplication Explorer online course
- Become a Citizen Scientist
- Visit friends of Natural Math for fabulous kid activities
What are you busy with this time of the year? Preparing for the holidays? Remembering all the things you and your family have done this year? Making plans for the new year? All of the above? We are too!
The Natural Math movement is growing – thank you for taking part! Online, through individual projects, and at group opportunities where we’ve invited you to meet and collaborate with other interested and passionate parents, math circle leaders, researchers, authors, and students. Hundreds sign up for the online courses like WOW! Multiplication, participating in crowdfunding campaigns to publish books like Camp Logic, and joining us at large events like Maker Faire, BugFest, SciTech Expo, SPARKcon, and Cary Art Walk. Our materials have been translated into many languages, and people are now reading these words with you live on all continents. Journalists who deeply care about education shared fabulous stories about our work at The Atlantic, Geek Mom, Creative Commons Foundation, and other media outlets.
How can you join these activities, and make them your own? How can you and your children develop meaningful, beautiful, and fun relationships with math? Check out what our community is working on in the next month and beyond.
Take Online Courses
We plan on making new courses available more regularly. We are asked a lot about multiplication, so we are starting the next year with the Multiplication Explorers, an online course for families and small groups that builds fluency in multiplication as participants adventure in algebra, calculus, arts and sciences. The new and improved course will feature favorite activities tested by hundreds of parents over the years, more videos (including video responses to participant questions!), live Q&A meetings every week at multiple times, updated materials with the latest interactives, and more. It will begin on January 26th. If you are interested, sign up to get more information about the course.
At the Citizen Science Station
If you or your kids ever wanted to participate in a real scientific research (as researchers, not as guinea pigs), or if you are already a researcher and loving it, then we’ve got something for you! Some of you had met Dr. Melissa Kibbe, a cognitive psychologist studying early algebra, at our Math Future open event. Now we are collaborating even more.
If you have kids ages 4-8 and want to be one of the first to try the Citizen Science Station at Natural Math, apply to be in alpha and beta testing starting in January. The data you gather will help to understand how young minds develop algebra. You will get citizen science training. You will meet Dr. Kibbe and fellow citizen scientists. Your kids will pretend-play an equations game that will grow with them. Watch the video invitation, and beam up to our Station!
Watch Out for New Books
After publishing our first book, Moebius Noodles, we gathered a team of innovative and talented authors, artists, and editors working together to create books that help you make math your own. The two that are scheduled for release in early 2015 and are available for pre-orders are Playing with Math and Camp Logic. Several more are at various stages of production, from the authors working on the first draft to the almost-finished book being at the hands of our beta readers (early reviewers). Email Maria Droujkova if you want to publish with us, or to be an early reviewer helping authors test and improve their work!
Organize Math Circles and Math Treks
We will continue leading local math circles and Math Treks, and sharing stories about them over at Natural Math. Our goal for 2015 is to put together a resource and support structure to help any interested parent, community volunteer, or older student to lead circles and treks of their own.
Natasha Rozhkovskaya’s new book, Math Circles for Elementary School Students is one of few resources for helping young kids work with complex math.
Visit Friends of Natural Math
Laura Grace Weldon wrote three blog posts connecting the Natural Math way of learning, meaningful math applications, and math play. The third post has 100+ small pieces that show how these connections work for different families and groups: music and dance, outdoors and sciences…
Share Math with Friends
All of our content is Creative Commons licensed. Most of our courses are pay-what-you-want and for those that aren’t scholarships are available. We encourage sharing and creative reuse of our content as long as it remains open to all. That’s why we had so much fun with Team Open, the new project at Creative Commons that shares powerful stories of using open licenses.
Here’s an example of what open licenses allow. Even if you don’t read Russian, you and your children can enjoy the visual parts in this cool remix of our multiplication models poster by ChildrenScience.
Talk to you next year! Dr. Maria Droujkova and Yelena McManaman
Posted in Newsletter
Math Circles for Elementary School Students – Book Review
Why are there so few math circles, particularly for younger children? One of the reasons is the belief that very young kids are simply not ready for complex math. Another reason is that finding deep and engaging math activities, adapted for this younger audience, is itself a challenge. Natasha Rozhkovskaya’s new book, Math Circles for Elementary School Students, helps deal with both these difficulties.
The book is based on Natasha’s experience leading a highly popular program for elementary school students at the Berkeley Math Circle. In the true “if you build it, they will come” fashion, the Circle attracted so many youngsters, that it had to be split into several smaller sections. What was originally thought of as a one-semester pilot program is currently in its 3rd year. Its young students return semester after semester to continue learning about such complex modern math ideas as symmetry, fractals, probability theory, logic, knot theory.
Natasha’s book addresses the issue of “too young for this kind of math” early on, in the first few pages. The rest of the book is a delightful collection of activities that deals with the activities challenge – what can young children do during the circle. There are detailed plans and activity descriptions for 28 math circle meetings (15 from the original BMC and 13 from a program Natasha started at the Kansas State University). There’s also something just as valuable as the lesson plans included with the original 15 lessons – Natasha’s reflections and notes on how her students worked through the activities.
In the video, I give some more details about the book and answer a few of Maria’s questions. I highly recommend it, particularly for those math circle leaders who are just starting out or who are starting to work with younger students. You can purchase this book from American Mathematical Society.
Posted in Grow
Family math: baby trinomials, can’t get 20 bagels, symmetry yoga aftermath
This is a collection of math sparks friends of Natural Math send us. Have something little (or big) to share? Email your videos, pictures, or text to maria@naturalmath.com
Sheryl Morris shares a a photo of playtime with a body-size Montessori Trinomial Cube from her colleague Martine Hestnes Healy from Cork, Ireland. Yay for baby algebra!
Dragan Tminic and Dor Abarahamson share a found picture. I used their comments for the caption:
Jennifer Rukhra writes:
After a round of symmetry yoga, my boys enthusiastically jumped into making these symmetrical paper cutouts. In the process, I said, “Isn’t math awesome?” And my oldest exclaimed, “This is math?!?” Find his Darth Vader mask in the attached photo.
We have four chapters of symmetry games in the Moebius Noodles book, including movement games and paper cutouts. Symmetry Yoga is Jennifer’s own invention.
Posted in Grow
The Dot and the Line Math Trek
Math Trek is a scavenger hunt game for families or informal groups. You walk around, discover math using the clues on the Trek Card, and take pictures of it.
During our Math Treks participants tell us about a strong, pleasant, slightly weird feeling: “I see your math in trees, buildings, people – everywhere! Now that you’ve shown me how to look, I can’t unsee it!” We call this effect math goggles. When you find the same pattern in several very different places, your mind automatically tags that pattern as important and universal, and encourages you to search for that pattern everywhere.
Natural Math, together with Cary Visual Art, ran a Math Trek through the downtown Cary sculpture exhibit on November 8. Our math and our art focused on dimensions, integration, and differentiation – in ways accessible even to young children. It was a cool, sunny Saturday, perfect for outdoor family fun. It was so good to see all the kids happily playing with calculus!
Now you can use the Trek Card we developed with your family and friends. We like to combine Math Trek with quick craft activities, as you can see in photos below. That way you not only discover mathematics all around but also make your own. Click to download the Trek Card PDF. If you would like to help us organize a math scavenger hunt in your area, drop us a line at reach.out@naturalmath.com
P.S. The name of the Trek comes from a 1960s book.
Posted in Make
