mathematics
Weather Station
My small town of Andover, NH, has the most wonderful local newspaper. The Andover Beacon started a new feature recently, “The Yankee Trader”, and I spotted a find! Not only did I get to explore a new road in my town, meet some delightful neighbors I hadn’t yet met, see their raspberry field, and listen to the lively stream behind their welcoming New England home, but I snagged a bargain for our school. Here is our new elementary school weather station!
Mr. Ralph very graciously agreed to puzzle out the instruction manual and do the installation before the snow piles up on the roof.
Mr. Ralph took us out with him so we could watch some of the installation. My students are used to hearing, “Math is everywhere!”, and he explained some of the math and science involved.
After determining the dominant wind direction, he built an extension for the cupola so that the wind vane and anemometer can flow freely in the wind.
He installed a metal bar to hold the rain gauge so that we can reach it to clear the hole of debris from time to time. It has a nifty self-emptying feature that we want to read more about.
Since it was only a day away from the shortest day of the year, he showed us how he used science to help him decide where to install the main instrument which includes the thermometer. It cannot be in the direct sunlight, so since the sun is at its lowest arc in the sky right now, he used the shadow to help him determine a good location.
And now it is just about ready to use! Thank you, Mr. Ralph, for your hard work and dedication to our learning. And thanks to the Andover Beacon for matching us up with a Yankee bargain just right for our brain adventure.
Gram and Ounce Museum
Friday math centers are one of the highlights of our week.
Here, students participate in a gram estimation challenge.
Dunk Your Head in Math
I’m still HOT. How about you? Since our brains need to cool off, perhaps this site will do the trick for you.
What?
And here, to complete your tour of the Plymouth Writing Project at Plymouth State University is a picture of my dorm room’s toilet. Seriously? Miss Blessing, that is TMI! TMI!
Do you notice anything unusual? Do you wonder why it is different from most of the toilets we’ve seen before? I wondered! The first day I arrived, I looked up several websites all about it because I had never seen a dual-flush toilet before.
Check it out.
http://home.howstuffworks.com/dual-flush-toilet.htm
And here is a description of some of the changes they made to the design when they created this building.
Math lovers, how could you estimate how many gallons of water one of these toilets saves a year if they’ve reduced their water use by 30% (averaged together with low flow showers)? Or for the 347 students who live here, how many gallons this whole building saves? What other information would you need to find out to solve this problem? Could you find some of that information on the internet? Some of it by estimating? (Ask your adult first about supervising your searches or look closely at the above website.) Put your estimates in a comment!
I wonder what ideas you have that might make a positive change for the future. Somebody thought up this toilet design, and you might be the designer of the next good stewardship idea. Write a comment about your thoughts.
Did you ever think that one of your teachers would be writing a post about . . . . toilets? Don’t say I never surprised you.
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Hooray for Symmetry!
Although our brains are absolutely “ROCKin” with our amazing Fraction/Decimal/Percent knowledge right now, it was a lovely math breath of fresh air to experiment with transparent mirrors and symmetry today. We need a little digestion time for those major math ideas, and reflection was just right for a sunny spring day.
3-D Geometry
Our Friday math centers included creating geometric figures
from marshmallows and toothpicks. What a blast!
We started by reading some fascinating architecture books to look at shapes
in bridges, tunnels, and buildings. Our favorite was Built to Last.
Can you find any prisms in our creations? How about any pyramids?
We can also identify all of the faces, edges, and vertices on our 3-D figures.
Go ahead. Challenge us to a geometry duel!
Friday Math Centers
Math is everywhere,
. . . and we’re all learners together!
Mini Metric Olympics!
A Friday with temperatures too frigid for outdoor recess required some emergency math movement measures. For math centers on this day we tackled the Mini Metric Olympics! Here are a few of our measurement events.
The Right-Handed Marble Grab
The Paper Plate Discus
The Left-Handed Sponge Squeeze
The Big Foot Area Challenge
Measuring Experts
Our math program is full of practical life skills, like using a personal reference to estimate measurements of length and then being able to accurately measure with an appropriate tool for the job.
