16
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
I remember being excited about the following at a young age.
If you add consecutive numbers you get triangle numbers.
Triangle numbers are fun.
If you put two consecutive triangle numbers together ...
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15
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
How about:
Numbers go the other way, too (negative)
You can cut numbers in half, forever
What if you cut a number into three pieces?
1 million is a thousand thousands (100 is ten tens)
If you don't ...
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7
votes
Correctness in learning mathematics
Here is my attempt to answer your question, if not directly, then at least in spirit! I am specifically responding to the following:
Many students see no beauty in this subject, only fear and a ...
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7
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
There is a great old Disney short called Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land.
As well as being delightfully drawn in the traditional Disney style, it contains lots of useful and occasionally surprising ...
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6
votes
Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
Below are some great and inspiring books by an excellent mathematician. (In the Really Big Numbers book, on the page where counting by tens is discussed there is an inspiring error (?)…Big Bird is ...
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6
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
The earlier question, "Teaching a very enthusiastic and bright 5 year old" could help.
Building and manipulating shapes enhances geometric imagination. Consider
polydrons, or
snap-cubes:
...
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5
votes
Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
Another book, to add to @Jon Bannon's list, that my 4 year old daughter and I can recommend is
Introductory Calculus For Infants. We also seem to discuss Graham's number a bit after watching the ...
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5
votes
Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
Arranging counters into groups (multiplication and division), so arranging 12 counters into 6x2, 3x4 etc, and realising that there are some numbers that cant' be arranged, no matter how hard you try (...
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4
votes
Reinforcement mathematics thinking of 10 years old child by teaching "patterns"
Most elementary students enjoy finding all the patterns in Pascal's triangle. This link at mathisfun covers many different patterns including the Fibonacci numbers (yes, they are in Pascal's triangle) ...
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4
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
Just to complete the list of books. Some time ago I read The Number Devil and liked very much. I think it is the proper book for your needs as the argument shows how a "math devil" shows math concepts ...
3
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Effects of early study of advanced books
Sorry if this sounds simple, but I think the biggest consideration is efficiency (maybe a bit related to the missing Y issue). If you study books that are too hard, it may take you longer than a more ...
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3
votes
Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
Base 2 counting on fingers - gets you up to 1023.
Base 12 counting - need two more numbers flip & flap. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, flip, flap, flap-one, flap-2, flap-3, flap-4, flap-5, flap-6, ...
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3
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
Try folding a piece of paper in half, then in half again and see how many times you can do it. start with A4 then find larger pieces-newspaper then wallpaper perhaps.
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2
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
While this is going to above the "age: 6" mark, I ran across this Youtube video just the other day that really fits the topic of this question, although for a different age group.
For those of you ...
2
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Effects of early study of advanced books
I was introduced to the concept of infinity early so I formed the intuition of the hyperreal number system. I think I also remember being taught in School that 0.999... = 1 and not understanding why ...
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2
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
I have been teaching my daughter mathematics now for nearly a decade. She is 13. I have been telling her that mathematics is a language- with symbols for imagining big numbers and patterns. Very ...
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2
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
Do an exercise a couple times per day with a hidden number. For example:
I just wrote a secret number down on this little piece of paper. I can't tell you what it is, but I'll tell you a secret: If ...
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2
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
I would try Pascal's triangle. It's easy to set up (requires only addition), and it has a bunch of cool patterns that your son can find.
One of those patterns is the Fibonacci sequence, which may be ...
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2
votes
Correctness in learning mathematics
I'm sure I've posted this elsewhere, but (in somewhat different ways) two curricula that try for this, I think, are
Heart of Mathematics (not free)
Discovering the Art of Mathematics (free)
Note ...
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2
votes
Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
You could introduce your child to CircleMath, invented by Dr Stephen Taylor. It is a very simple process for using 2 bases at once, eg 9 & 10, 10 & 11, 9 & 11 is best because it has many ...
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2
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Accepted
Reinforcement mathematics thinking of 10 years old child by teaching "patterns"
This article on the Fibonacci numbers could provide you with rich material.
But you would have to develop an approach suitable for your 10-yr old.
George Dvorsky.
"15 Uncanny Examples of the ...
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1
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
I recently pulled out my old polyhedral dice from my role-playing days and gamified multiplication tables with my seven-year-old twins: roll two dice and multiply them. How many can you do correctly ...
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
Pull out a couple of Möbius strips at the dinner table. There is nothing like a "magic trick" to inspire wonder.
Know all of the fun stuff you can do cutting them, double looping them etc. If you ...
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1
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
There are many different ways to write numbers - base-10, binary, hexadecimal. You can have any number of digits 2 or greater, as long as one of those digits is 0.
Numbers that have an exact decimal ...
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1
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
As a parenting question (rather than a formal teacher question), we found it good to put the number in context, or rather, extract the numbers from our local context.
For example, when driving home ...
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1
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
Inspiring question..
Try explaining bisecting: Get a number between 1 and 10(00) and let him guess by cutting the range in half.
Summing a sequence of numbers (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6) = 1+6 + 2+5 + 3+4
...
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1
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
I find this video by VSauce on logarithmic thinking really interesting. I dont know if its appropriate for a 6 year old, but in the video he mentions this is the way we naturally understand the world, ...
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1
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
At some point you need to remember why we should even educate at all -- because there are useful things to know so we can do things in life. The more practical and relevant things you can demonstrate ...
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