Welcome to Kenilworth Maths club home page.
Second meeting, Friday 26th October, 1pm-3pm at Kenilworth Methodist Church, Station Road.
Cost will be 4 pounds per family.
Material for the second meeting
Handout for week 2 - about the session
dice board version 1
dice board version 2
dice board version 3
Sum from 1 to 10 (for the 10+ group)
Pascal's triangle
Several versions of Pascal's triangle for colouring - others available...
A Pascal triangle ,
B 2 colours ,
C 3 colours,
D 4 colours
Extra problems for older group, approx 10+, Marco's translation
Materials to download from other sites for second meeting:
origami Sonobe unit
coloringsquared
Nrich resources for Cuisenaire rods
flower colouring sheet
making yellow rods
Material for the first meeting here
Below are notes written before the meeting
Theme for second meeting: Whole numbers - a very broad topic!
Possible activities
- games involving addition, e.g., snakes and ladders
- As before, a large selection of problems from the
Liverpool fun maths road show
- number puzzles, e.g., magic squares
- colouring by numbers - probably just colouring Pascal's triangle by number -
this sort of thing; there are many other examples. I will put up a colouring sheet.
I will use some print outs from
coloringsquared
- playing with weights and old fashioned scales. Might save this for a meeting on measurements.
- Cuisenaire rods.
I may print out some of the
Nrich resources for Cuisenaire rods.
I will bring along a set of the rods, and graph paper for colouring pictures of them. I would love Cuisenaire rod stickers, but I can't find any to buy, and don't have time to make any.
Also planning on using some ideas from
Spatial Problem Solving with Cuisenaire Rods
by Patricia Davidson, Robert E. Willcutt (seem to be several versions of this book).
There are lots of pages and colouring sheets about these rods, such as this
flower colouring sheet. May use this sheet
- Pascals triangle (of numbers) lots of picture of this online, but I made this
Pascal's triangle (with pari and texshop), but do search and look for others, lots of great ways to present the information!
I will probably have to try to avoid being over enthusiastic about Pascal's triangle and overloading people. Probably colouring it in is enough for today.
There are many many patterns hidden in the triangle - see the cut the knot page for some examples.
- Fibonacci sequence (and maybe some geometry and puzzles to go with these numbers).
I think perhaps at this meeting just introduce it, and at later meetings do more with this. Plan on doing
how to draw a
Fibonacci spiral. There are many many other descriptions of this on the internet.
- Other number patterns and number games
- May put up popular things from first meeting, especially if someone requests it.
- I will put out the instructions for making an origami Sonobe unit
-
I thought
this article was interesting, which I was reading in thinking about how to set up the resources - in particular, the comment that
"children do not necessarily learn to count out change correctly simply by playing with a cash register", but need more structure provided, compared with
what she says about removing the cards children had copied to make patterns with pattern blocks or number rods, to allow them to play and discover freely.
I will not bring our toy cash register, since although Florian loves playing shop, to make it mathematical, it is a fairly intensive one to one game with an adult to check the change etc. I'll probably bring the pattern blocks again.
Planning future meetings on topics such as
- games with counters - board games, solitare, tower of Hanoi, anything that could be interpreted as a game with counters
- Fractions, and other numbers that are not whole - What is "Pi" and other interesting numbers
- coding and cryptography
- Polyhedra, giant geodesic dome....
- Circles, spirals, wheels, things that go round...
- Infinitely big and infinitesimally small - very big and very tiny - fractals, fractions, calculus, paradoxes of infinity....
- Probabilities, games of chance, what does probability mean
- measuring things, averages...
- etc....
- Kapla, Keva, Citi blocks - all pretty much the same - there are some maths info about these here:
Keva,
Keva,
Citiblocs,
Kapla. Will probably include this as part of some meeting sometime.
About me (Helena Verrill): you might want to know who I am - I'm home schooling Tobi and Florian, aged 5 and 10, but for many years worked professionally as an academic mathematician, teaching up to and including Ph.D. level - this does not necessarily qualify me to teach at lower levels, but I hope we will help you enjoy mathematics. I currently teach part time at Warwick University.
I enjoy origami mathematics, and about 20 years ago made a
page about some of my designs, which seems not to have died yet.
Marco Schlichting
will also be helping, but since he works full time at Warwick University, most of the work of preparing
the meetings, web site, communications, materials, etc, is up to me!
Marco taught Music Together - a music class for 0-5 year olds - for 7 years, so has quite a bit of experience with teaching young children.
Perhaps sometime we can include some music in the maths club!
Marco will run 2 or three short led sessions for different age groups -
these are for parents together with their children. We take a "maths together" approach, similar to the "music together" approach taken in the music class. Even more in home education than otherwise, you are your child's first teacher, and want to be able to do things together, including maths, with young children