PLAYING WITH MATH

I am a bit unsure of what to title this post. I have been reading blogs (lots of 'em) about "living math", "math journals" and such. Of course, I always want to wait until I completely understand a concept before I jump in. Heaven knows, I don't want my kids to do a math journal "wrong"! Well, in attempt to get over my fear of not doing it right, we started today. Yes, I just grabbed some $.99 notebooks that I purchased for something a while back, and we started.
On the recommendation from this post over at the Pumpkin Patch blog (the book titles are slightly different, but it is the same series) I had ordered a few of these math books from our library. So, with journals, pencils and books in hand we began.


The boys enjoyed reading about the baby Panda-- they were most interested in the fact that this newborn panda weighed about as much as a butter stick.

Then the work began. While I don't have pics of all three of the boys (the lighting was too dark in the direction of the other two), they all began to write- first the name of the baby Panda- then a graph of her weight at birth and two weeks later. They also determined how much she gained in that time. They each graphed it in a slightly different way.

For whatever reason, they were also interested in decorating their pages. Hopefully, that type of enthusiasm will last!!

Some math journal info:

at Let's Play Math

over at Blog, She Wrote

also at Blog, She Wrote

and at the Pumpkin Patch

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 22, 2009 at 5:49 PM

    That is very impressive! Mark looks like he is having a great time! What a neat way to teach math.
    Jen

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJuly 21, 2010 at 4:52 AM

    Are you still using Math Journals? How did you like these books? I am wanting to try a Math Journal with my oldest (4th) this year and these books look really interesting! Thanks

    ReplyDelete

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