Did someone say fractions?

The lament of students and parents alike….Ugh, fractions. Why do we need them? They are very helpful in describing quantities in relationship to each other….”Only give Suzy half the box of frosted yum-yums dear, we don’t want to make her hyper…” This concept is usually a pretty easy one to grasp, especially when dealing with easy fractions like halfs, quarters, and thirds. It gets a little trickier when dealing in fifths, sixths and tenths.

A more difficult concept to grasp is comparing fractions…which is more 2/3 or ¾? 3/5 or 5/6? There are graphical ways to look at this and there are mathematical ways to look at this. If your child is more of a visual learner, I suggest making fraction bars from different colored pieces of paper (or white…you can use colored pencils to give them color – I don’t really recommend using markers for this – it gets really messy very quickly.) The most important thing is each piece of paper needs to be THE EXACT SAME SIZE! You need one piece of paper for each denominator that you want to compare. So, for example, say we want to compare halves, thirds, fourths, fifths and tenths; we would need 5 sheets of paper that are the exact same size. We are going to use folds to separate our pieces of paper (the whole) into its parts. For ½ - just fold the paper in half. Place the short ends together and make a nice crease down the middle. Next make the fourths. Once again, with a new piece of paper, place the short ends together and make a nice crease. Then, do it again. You should end up with four equal sections.  For the thirds and the fifths, help your child by marking the measurements for the thirds and fifths and having them fold the paper along the lines, accordion style. Make 2 sets for the fifths and fold one of the fifths in half again to get the 10ths. You now have 5 wholes separated into different parts. You can now compare fractions….what does 8/10 look like? Compare it to 2/3. Which is more of the whole? Can you find fractions that are equivalent? That have the exact same part of the whole?

You can play fraction top-it if you have 2 or 3 decks of cards you don’t mind blending…make a pile of numerators and a pile of denominators. The numerators be the 1, 2 , and 3’s , the denominators should be the 4, 5, 6, 8, 10. (you should have fraction strips to match each denominator for fact checking…)Each person makes a fraction; the person with the largest fraction (biggest part of the whole) wins the cards. If there is a challenge as to whose is bigger, go to the fraction strips. If the challenger wins, the challenged has to give them 2 extra cards.

As always…practice, practice, practice.

Puzzling

What can be better on a rainy summer Sunday that whiling away the hours flexing your math brain? “What?” you say..”The only math brain I am flexing on a summer Sunday is figuring out if I can cram 3 whole pancakes in my mouth at one time.” But, I am willing to bet you have been doing mental calisthenics without even thinking about it. Of course, I am talking about jigsaw puzzles.  On a recent weekend, I was lolling about with the kids, when the 8 year old grabbed a puzzle and quietly retreated to the game room. One by one, every member of my family was lost to the power of the puzzle. Jigsaw puzzles are not only great rainy day entertainment, they work that summer-slackened brain. Keeping it  thinking logically (No that piece can’t go there…not the right color red) thinking spatially (this little piggy goes somewhere over here…) and methodically (Start with the edges…work your way in.) You don’t have to get the 5000 piece circular puzzle to reap the benefits, start with 100 pieces and work your way up!

The End of Pi?

Did everyone hear about the fight to stop using pi and start using tau? No? Seriously? Every June 28^th for the last 10 years, there has been a call to stop using Pi in favor of using Tau. Granted, the call is from a small rogue band of mathematicians and physicist, but the call makes it to national news outlets. (Think yahoo news and NPR, not CBS nightly..) There is no argument against the value of Pi or the important role it plays in the circle, the argument is that Pi isn’t very useful in most of the calculations we need to do with circles. Tau is no mystery number; it is equal to 2 π.  So, for example, when teaching students about radians, you could say a ½ circle= ½Tau radians. There’s more parity. Yeah, yeah…I get it, but seriously, do we need to upset the apple cart here? No.

Why Not? Because there is no humor in Tau. Right now, there is a dearth of math humor for the middle school set; we need to keep the giggles going here. On March 14^th of every year (Pi day…) middle schoolers everywhere bake pies in the shape of Pi. What would they do for Tau day? (Not that they are in school at that time….) Would they make towels in the shape of Tau? Boooo-ring.  What about the t-shirt business?

i 8 sum pi...hahahaha!                                           Chicken Pot Pi

                       You just can't do this with tau......

Practice, practice, practice

Homework. The word is dreaded by students. Parents have a love/hate relationship with it. But, what’s the point? School systems are moving away from homework being a large part of one’s grade, so why do we subject the kids to it?  Practice.  Seriously. We don’t get better at anything without practice. In math it is especially true. Practice makes basic math facts automatic and allows us to see the patterns lurking right before us. What’s a parent to do? I have a list of favorite sites that help my own kids and my students bone up on their math minutes,

http://www.helpingwithmath.com/resources/tab_multiplication_tables.htm  This site is great for multiplication drill practice.

http://www.math-drills.com/  This site is my favorite all-around site for math. It has elementary to high school practice sheets. Addition, fractions, geometry.

http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx?ID=f8529ab2e6e24a7694fba30b5b178d9d  This is a site sponsored by the National Center for Educational Statistics. It is a nice graphing interface.

Practice, practice, practice.