Math Everyday!

I used to have a bumper sticker that said, "Math everyday!"  I just love math and so it is no surprise that I enjoy helping others (specifically youth) enjoy math.  For the last six years, I have led a local middle school math program called Math Counts.  I usually only have a small group of youth that allows us to represent our home school group with a team to go to a competition.  This year I only have two students...one being our son Henry...AND he is the only one who is the right age to compete.  

We meet once a week to learn practical skills and how they relate to real life situations.  This is not your typical middle school math.  In fact, usually this is about teaching higher level math skills.  I have even had to pull out a calculus text to solve a problem or two.  The main skill is to learn problem solving techniques.

In the past, I have just taught lessons as needed while working through the word problems.  This year I decided to actually teach a lesson on a specific topic and find word problems that relate to that topic.  Last week we covered prime numbers.  We played a game that helped Henry and Sarah  find the prime or composite numbers.  This was done by choosing a number on a chart and then finding its factors...the idea was to add up the points gained from the factors.  This usually meant choosing a composite number gained more points.    

This week our focus was on exponents.  After going over the basic rules of exponents, we played Exponent War.  The idea was like the old fashioned War game with playing cards; however, the players placed a card as the base number and then a second card as the exponent.  It was a lot of fun to see how quickly numbers exponentially increased.

Sarah and Henry are very quiet and like to work alone.  This might seem acceptable but for the fact that we have a challenge that needs team work.  This year is the 30th anniversary of the Math Counts program.  Each group was sent a blank board along with the supplies needed to create a unique board game.  We started last week going through the steps of how to create a board game.  

I never really thought of this as an engineering project but once it was explained it very obvious.  The steps include: identifying the problem, criteria and constraints, brainstorming solutions, generating ideas, exploring possibilities and building a prototype (which will be tested).  I think it was a great way to get the two to think through a fun problem that needed to be solved.  

Last week they worked on brainstorming ideas.  This week they were supposed to start exploring their options.  Still working together individually, they began creating their board game.  Henry drew out the board while Sarah watched.  I tried to get them to work together but they were happier along side each other.  The decision was to let Henry make the board and Sarah would create the cards used on the board.  

I look forward to continuing this learning process with Henry and Sarah.  It is fun to see how they learn together.  I will try to post their game when they complete it.  Maybe it will be a game found in stores one day!