When planning for the year, I decided to include other aspects of Math in our daily studies. These included: reading of fiction books with a math theme (our current math read aloud is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster), discovering people in the mathematics field and reading biographies of them (this is a great website I use often) and practical application of math in real life. I also brought this book off of our shelves, How Math Works.
This book is a wonderful resource of experiments and practical applications of math in every day life. We try and use this book in relation to whatever we are studying at least once a week. Our recent study of calculating area led us to a very fun section in this book on Friday. Joshua completed three math experiments, all applying area in some practical way.
Josh declared this experiment on atmospheric pressure on an area his favorite. Not surprising lol. What 12 year old boy could resist “whacking” something.
This experiment, using parachutes, shows how the surface area affects its resistance to air and its speed of descent.
And the last experiment, economy in wrapping, showed by wrapping goods using the least possible material, costs and waste can be kept to a minimum.
With this kind of fun, who says Math has to be all about just boring worksheet pages!
Thanks for that book suggestion. I am looking for more ideas to show the practical applications to my children’s least favorite subject! ;)
This looks awesome! :-) I am going to have to get my hands on this book.
Ooh. Thanks for the book recommendation. Our library system has it, and I put it on hold. We’ve been taking a break from math drill, and instead have been doing fun math lately.
Looks like alot of fun!!!!!
Angela, Step, and Theresa,
Glad you found the book of some interest. We are having fun with it.
Floridamom,
So glad you visited and found something useful. I enjoyed browsing your own blog. I even printed out your smoothie recipe!