3 Ring Binder

One of the other games we played on Mother's Day was Krypto . Krypto is a math card game so my youngest agreed to play it only under Mother’s-Day-induced-duress. It can become a hair-pulling game (explained well at the Wikipedia link above) in which you have to mathematically manipulate five randomly drawn number cards to combine into a sixth objective number card- first.  If you don’t see the simple connections right away you tend to get easily frustrated by how close you can come to the objective.  Happily, close doesn’t cut it in math. While playing the game, I ran into an interesting conflict of my values.  Because I am delighted that my mother is playing Sudoku, or Jumble, or other word and number games to keep her mind active, I was happy to see her on board with the idea of playing Krypto. True to herself, she was a very enthusiastic player and did not stop or become sidetracked trying to cajole the reticent twelve year-old into playing.  I appreciate t...

Check out the  Border Wars post on these three dwarf genetic disorders and the breed standards that demand them. It's really interesting. As much as I find my Izzy a delightful little photogenic and lovable beast, next time, it's a real, full-size dog for me.

A friend sent me this blog for my daughter who hates math. First, a Gaussian Christmath. Eating candy buttons in a mobius strip?!?! What is not to love? I hope you enjoy her work almost as much as my daughter and I have. Have a great weekend.

In honor of Leibniz’ first use of the big “S” in integral calculus (as seen above and reported in the Jewish World Review to have occurred on this date 335 years ago), I’d like to settle this controversy once and for all. Which of these statements is correct?     I can’t go to prom, I have the calculus homework. I can’t go to the prom, I have calculus homework. Never mind that your high school dances were decades ago and your use of higher math completely forgotten, or even that both statements scream that you’re a serious geek  and a very bad planner if math homework prevents you from attending the big night. It’s simply a matter of correct usage at this point, and has always bothered me. While prom is short for the noun, promenade , meaning a ball or dance, it seems to be used in the first sentence as an infinitive form of the verb.   If it were the object of the preposition, it would require the definite article the before prom . Wouldn’t it? And how ab...

“But, but, but, but,” she stammers, beginning each new play. Some answers are worked out, but most are locked away. Heavy breathing, hand-wringing, pencil tapping, a final sigh; My adoration of graphite figures divides my daughter and I. The daily order of operations occurs something like this: A pencil scrapes, an eraser abuses, some screaming, then a kiss. Mathematics, not blood, is after all, what I’m after. Our mornings would be better with the addition of some laughter. So why can’t I the find humor in her intent to distract? Why assume nothing positive in her tendency to overreact? Her ability to “do the math” is not lacking by any mean, But her strength multiplies as thespian: my calculating drama queen.

in the binary world:   those who would classify today’s date (with a modified “yy”) as 30  and those who would classify it as 54 .   In either case, I could not resist embracing the geek represented in today’s date (011110 – I’m a Little Endian and quite happy to discover such ). If binary is not your thing, how about this? Define vinculum . You learn something new everyday.

Some more random number geekiness . Today’s date is a palindrome. I’m holding off celebrating until Pi day .

Sometimes I forget what a charmed life I led as a child. One of my greatest possessions was my very own Close-N-Play and the entire collection of Sesame Street 45s in their own snazzy carrying case. That’s right, people: The entire collection (circa 1970). I played those records over and over and over again. I forget about those early influences until I hear the lead-ins to any of the classic Sesame Street songs and all the words come rushing back.   In honor of Sesame Street ’s 40 th anniversary, I’d like to share some of my favorites. The songs by Joe Raposo and Jeff Moss were engaging, but the Muppet creations by Jim Henson were inspiring. Sure. You couldn’t pay me to watch it now, but I did love Sesame Street and some of those pre-Elmo characters, to wit I give you this little quiz so you can determine which Sesame Street character you are most like.    I was the Count which didn’t surprise me at all but did call the validity of the quiz int...

This brief movie by Charles and Ray Eames (1977) does a great job in showing the relative size of things in and out of this world.

In a campaign to urge our homeschool chorus to pick "Schoolhouse Rock" as our theme for next year, I'd like to showcase a variety of song stylings put forth by those little educational videos of the 70s (and I have to scoop Amy ). Talk about wistful.

From Pedagogically Correct , the occasional newsletter from VanDamme Academy , Lisa VanDamme reports on a great and simple game she invented called, "Tell Me Everything You Know". While Ms. VanDamme made up the game for her classroom setting, I bet it could be used with great success in a homeschool setting by giving points for each observation and adding the points together each day. The motivation is to get more points today than yesterday. Tell Me Everything You Know I have invented a new educational game. I call it "Tell Me Everything You Know." Here is how the game works in my grammar class: I write a sentence on the board, set a time limit, and then have the students write down every grammatical fact they can name about the sentence. When the time is up, I go around the room, asking each student to volunteer one of his observations. If someone else in the class has written the same thing, both must cross it off their lists. If no one else has made the same ob...

That’s right – another random calendar date is cause for a celebration of mathematics. According to today’s Boston Globe, Square Root Day was invented by a California teacher who wanted to promote some enthusiasm of … well I’m not quite sure, but you can read the little blurb yourself. Dates like 3/3/09 come around only nine times in a century, so there’s that. I support teachers who are tireless in their efforts to actively engage the minds of their students, and I certainly appreciate how difficult it is to sometimes generate enthusiasm in children who may actually fear mathematics. I can even see the fun in an exercise trying to find all the “Square Root Days” in a century. I’m just not sure how promoting celebrations on specific dates through a forced association with a mathematical process accomplishes that goal. (Not to mention that the kids in the second half of the century get totally ripped off.) Could it be possible that I’m just no fun? Nah. Take Pi Day – that’s a differe...

This is not about Giles Corey , but rather in case your child asks, as mine did this morning, here are some things you might want to know about the unit "pound"and its seemingly disconnected abbreviation. pound (lb, lbm, or #) [1] a traditional unit of mass or weight. The Romans used a pound (the libra pondo, "pound of weight") divided into 12 ounces. All the countries of western Europe used similar units, divided into 12 or 16 ounces, until the advent of the metric system. 12-ounce pounds were common in Italy and southern France, but in Spain and northern Europe 16-ounce pounds became the norm. The word libra is used for this unit in Italy, Spain, and Portugal; in France it is called the livre . Further north, the Latin word pondo ("weight") is the origin of the names of the English pound, Dutch pond, Danish pund, German pfund, and Russian funt. In England, two different "pound" units became standard. The unit now in general use in the United S...