![]() So cool.īUT WE’RE NOT DONE YET! Because Max, being the super creative genius that he is, had a new problem for us. We then conjectured that if we had been able to continue, we would have landed on 25. She was all grins, and I was probably scaring the other visitors I was so excited. I assured her that when she added 7 more it couldn’t possibly be a square again, and boy did she prove me wrong. Then when I had her add 5, she added them along the outside of her 4 square, and found that it was still a square! WHAT?! She was into it. I had to nudge her in the direction of making a square, but we got there, and she noticed that. Then I had her put another 3, for a total of 4 on the tray. Then I asked her to describe it, which wasn’t too exciting. The girl wasn’t quite sure what to make of this, so I brought her over to the eggs, and asked her to put 1 egg on a tray. The stepping stones we’d landed on were 1, 4, 9, and 16. After mom graciously carried her daughter from 9 to 16 we saw that we would exceed our number line in the next leap, so we paused to figure out what we’d decided. Then 1+3+5=9 wasn’t too bad, but we had a bit of a time keeping the numbers in our heads and had to frequently remind ourselves what we were adding to what. We got 1+3=4 easily, and she leapt from 1 to 4. Turned out this problem was a bit of a doozy on the stepping stones. If you’ve never done it, stop reading, and go figure out what happens when you add consecutive odd numbers starting at 1. The girl, however, wanted more problems, so I wracked my brain and came up with the sum of odd numbers. We used the really handy wood chips Math on a Stick is covered in as a model for splitting numbers into equal groups. They were duly impressed (or faked it well enough for the sake of my enthusiasm) that there were numbers with billions of digits that can’t be put into equal groups. They kindly indulged me while I pestered them with questions about how they thought about prime numbers and explained about the infinite-ness of primes. Needless to say, I nearly knocked people over in my haste to reach this mom-daughter pair. I even do it willingly because primes are just so flipping neat. One of my Achilles heel’s as a teacher is that my students can always get me off topic by asking questions about prime numbers. They figured out which stones they would not step on if they were skip counting, and stepped on those! (Mom did a lot of carrying her daughter between stepping stones that were too far apart.) Awesome!įor those who know me well, PRIME NUMBERS ARE MY JAM. They even counted PRIME NUMBERS on the stepping stones. Anyhow, he told me this girl was so excited about them that he’d exhausted the problems he usually uses (count by 2s 23 minus 24, etc.). I hope he’ll write up his version of events, because I came in only halfway through. ‘Twas Wednesday evening when Max came over to tell me he’d just had a great experience at the stepping stones with a mom and daughter. Math on a Stick is blessed to have Max Ray-Riek and Annie Fetter as volunteers, and while I have sadly missed working with Annie this year, I have gotten to spend a fair amount of time there with Max. ![]() Here are some more stories about why it’s so great and then some teacher musings. It’s better to address air bubbles while rolling rather than when the cake is already covered.After the phenomenal time I spent last weekend at Math on a Stick, I signed up for 2 more slots this week – making a total of 4 for this year. Push the air out and smooth with your finger. Angle the pin to go in from the side of the bubble rather than the top so that the mark is less noticeable. You can easily remove these using a clean pin.
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