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Interesting maths for interested small children...

24 replies

Haberdashery · 25/08/2012 22:43

My DD is nearly six and about to go into year 1 (old for her year, September birthday). She absolutely loves maths. She's got a great handle on adding and subtracting up to about 100 or so and also is starting to understand multiplication with small numbers as well as dividing. If I ask her what four lots of two or five or six are, she can work it out and enjoys doing so. She can also work out what a number is divisible by so can tell me that you can divide 20 by 10 and 5 and 4 and 2 if I ask. It's not learnt facts, she does understand what she's doing. Long division/multiplication are way beyond her at the moment as she can't manipulate the numbers. Fractions also confuse her a bit. So she's quite bright and VERY interested but not a genius! The multiplying and dividing came about as parts of games where she's divvying up treats between imaginary children in a school etc - am honestly not pushy parent but keen to encourage her to enjoy her interest in numbers.

I'm wondering if any of you may have recommendations for books or websites or just topics that would give me ideas of other stuff we could talk about. As an example, we talked about prime numbers yesterday morning after she had an unsatisfactory time trying to divide 11 things between five toys, and all day today she's been wondering (mainly out loud and at length - my poor ears) which numbers are prime and not and working out stuff like 15 isn't but 17 is etc. She has really enjoyed thinking about it. She went to bed wondering how big a prime number can be. I did tell her they go on for ever but I'm not sure she really believed me.

All the books about fun maths I've seen are aimed at much older children. She can read fairly well for her age but not completely fluently and finds larger print much more accessible, and she would find the things I've seen in shops etc much too hard to access alone. Obviously I can read things to her but the books I've seen are also aimed at children who can manipulate larger numbers and also cope with the vocab around this, which she seems to kind of 'forget' when I tell her about it. I imagine she's just not really ready for that kind of formal presentation.

I know there are some really good teachers on here and there must be other parents who have children who are also interested in this kind of thing, so I would love some recommendations of source materials I could buy/get on the internet or just things to talk about and tell her about that don't rely on being able to deal with more complex calculations, or which I can help her to find out about in the real world with the help of raisins as counters or whatever. We talked about square numbers and triangle numbers a while back and she wanted to know why you can't have circle numbers which I failed to answer adequately. To be honest, the idea of trying to explain pi to her, which seemed to be the next sensible step was just too hard for me! I can't see how I could do it yet.

I have an A Level in maths so I'm not completely clueless and would be able to dredge stuff up from ancient memory with a few pointers of where to head. We had a nice talk a while back about rotational symmetry and we've also drawn some Venn diagrams which she thought very enjoyable. We've done bar charts and we've

Anyone? I'm sort of at the limit of what I can think of alone and would love to hear of anything fun and mathematical that anyone else has 'played' with their children.

Please don't tell me to send her to Kumon or anything - I don't think that's what she needs. She needs something mind-expanding and enjoyable/interesting/a bit weird, and I think there is plenty of time for learning the actual calculation stuff, given that she's obviously not going to struggle with it.

Wow, that was long! Sorry. If anyone can give me some ideas, I'd be really grateful.

OP posts:
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Haberdashery · 25/08/2012 22:58

We've done bar charts and we've

Sorry, that was meant to end that we've done a little on cubing numbers (until the numbers got too big).

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UniS · 25/08/2012 23:08

DS finds it VERY interesting

  • that he can add up BIG numbers using column addition. He likes doing sums with millions.
  • finding out the names for BIG numbers, he's fascinated by the idea of a gogoogleplex and also infinity.
Tgger · 25/08/2012 23:09

Ok, just asking the husband (his department!)..... fractions- cake pieces, pi- a ribbon round a cake, take ribbon off, how many times bigger is the ribbon round the cake than cutting across the cake- 3 and a bit times bigger. Irrational numbers like pi- never ending. Big numbers- go up to a billion, trillion, infinite etc- real world examples such as how many grains of sand on a beach. Geometry generally. Think you may be as far ahead as us though. Will watch with interest!

Haberdashery · 25/08/2012 23:30

I did think about column addition, UniS, but I think that they do it differently at school now and I don't want to confuse her! I want her to do things how they like her to, not give her tools that turn out to be the wrong ones for what school would like her to do. Is that silly? I think she could cope with column addition but would probably not be that interested as it's kind of just more of the same. I might give it a go and see what happens/if she's interested. She is not hugely interested in large numbers, although she does find infinity really interesting!

Tgger, that all sounds good. We could do real circles. Cups, bowls, buckets and measure the ribbon.

I think irrational numbers might blow her tiny mind if I could get the message across sufficiently well! As I said, long division is a bit beyond her for the moment and it's all kind of tied up in a way.

Geometry sounds like a good area to look at. If I come up with anything interesting to do/talk about I will let you know! I think she might be interested in angles if I can think of something interesting to do with them.

With fractions, she is absolutely OK with pieces of cake and adding them together or taking them away if they are all quarters or thirds or whatever, but I struggle to find a way of explaining the next level (lowest common denominator etc). She can see that half of a half is a quarter so maybe soon!

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Haberdashery · 25/08/2012 23:31

Oh yes, and origami has been interesting for DD (related but different). I think it would be possible to relate that to angles in a fun way.

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Tgger · 25/08/2012 23:34

I think DS doesn't bother about blowing his mind Grin. DS flaps when excited- not autistic but that kind of thing, and apparently irrational numbers got much flappage!- some time ago apparently though, in the spring I think.

Tgger · 25/08/2012 23:34

that should be DH doesn't bother...!

ApricotPoodle · 25/08/2012 23:37

Fibonacci sequence and how it relates to patterns in nature.
Methods to find out the height of a tree.
Using a compass and bearings.

ApricotPoodle · 25/08/2012 23:40

Oh, and negative numbers are great, especially if you can find a building with many floors and staircases, or perhaps a house with a cellar, so you can count as you walk up and down steps.

Haberdashery · 26/08/2012 08:12

Brilliant ideas, thank you. I think she will love the Fibonacci sequence in particular. I seem to remember my own mother telling me about it at a similar age and I'd forgotten all about it!

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withgreatpower · 26/08/2012 09:13

What about some fun with a Moebius strip?

See for ex:
stargazers.gsfc.nasa.gov/pdf/activities/math_activities/math_teacher/math_act_11_t.pdf

Or you could try these maths tricks:
www.pleacher.com/mp/puzzles/mtricks.html

www.pleacher.com/mp/puzzles/numtrks.html

MorningPurples · 26/08/2012 09:17

things like those number 'tricks', where someone thinks of a number, and you learn a series of things to do to it, and then eventually you get back to the original number - she might enjoy working out why the various things cancel each other out

patterns of numbers on calculators - if she understands multiplication but can't yet do the bigger numbers, she could use the calculator, and see the numbers that comes up to 123456789, or 333333333 etc (I can't remember all the 'tricks' now, but I used to think it was really cool as a child).

other patterns of number - like adding up 9s (the nine times table) and how all the digits in the answers add up to nine, and make a nice pattern 0-9 in tens and 9-0 in the units

tessellation

cooking with American style cups. I remember discovering things like two quarters making a half, by seeing it on the cups, or when the half-cup measure was dirty from a previous ingredient and I was too lazy to wash it and I realised I could just use the quarter-cup twice.

which numbers have the most things that could divide into them easily. They were always my favourite numbers (prime numbers were the worst). I liked 12 and 72 and numbers like that best, because there were the most situations where nobody ever got left out (in my mind they were like groups of people, so they could be in pairs, threes, fours, sixes, etc). Also this is good practice for fractions later on, as you start to learn which numbers are good for e.g. common denominators

other infinities. What happens if you keep cutting something in half?

negative numbers - good for games where you gain and lose points each turn, or thinking of earning money/paying debts, or when you get to temperatures below and above freezing

geometry like how to build an arch etc (cathedrals sometimes have good displays on this)

Probabilities - even simple ones like a die, is it really fair? Make a chart and every day roll it 20 times and record it, how long until it all balances out and looks even? With various games, you can then get into two-dice probabilities. Like Snakes and Ladders even, how often do double-sixes come up, or whatever combination gives you some bonus in the game. Yahtzee might be a little hard, but it's good for have to make decisions based on probability, and yet there's lots of luck in it, too, so it's not like an adult has an unfair advantage either, easy to talk her through it.

Other strategy games - e.g. there's a simple one called Lost Cities - are also good for probability, thinking ahead, logic.

I used to love those logic puzzles where they give you some information and you have to make a chart and work out the rest. You know, three teachers and three subjects and three classrooms, Mrs White doesn't teach physics, Mrs Black teaches in classroom 4, chemistry cannot be taught in Class 2, etc etc. There are books of them, and they are great for the logic needed for maths. Sudoku is a similar idea, and you can get children's books for those, too.

MorningPurples · 26/08/2012 10:35

also, just with simple arithmetic - I remember enjoying discovering things like 3x8 being the same as 6x4, and why - the idea of doubling the number of groups and halving how many are in them (or vice versa), and realising (a bit older) that I could do more impressive mental questions immediately, like 6x18, because I knew 12x9. (on a more simple level, that multiplying by 5 is half of multiplying by 10).

Or the idea that if you were adding something to 9, the units digit of the answer would be one less than what you were adding (9+5 - you know the units will be 4). I know they teach that now as a strategy in mental maths, but I remember discovering it myself, and was impressed.

Roman numerals or counting in bases other than 10 are also good at making you think about how the number system works, how many symbols do you need, etc. Also other methods of recording numbers from other periods of time.

powers - that story about someone wanting to be paid by only one coin on the chessboard on the first day, two coins the next, then four, then double each day till the chessboard was full, or being paid a fixed bigger amount each square, and the king or whoever it was chooses the doubling method because he thinks it'll be a lot less, but of course it's not.

Haberdashery · 26/08/2012 11:09

These are all fantastic. Thank you all so much!

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PeasandCucumbers · 26/08/2012 23:27

Haven't got any ideas to add but wanted to say how great the suggestions have been from all the replies, am going to remember thesewhen DS & DD want to do maths stuff

trifling · 27/08/2012 10:23

Love these suggestions. Maths for Mums and Dads is great for explaining how maths is taught now, and has some fun games. Dragonbox app (also on pc, I think, or android phone) introduces algebraic concepts and is very doable (and huge fun) at 6.
I like cuisenaire rods too, and playsets with multiple objects (or haribo!) for dividing, but sounds like you're a bit past that.

Ferguson · 27/08/2012 19:18

Hi -

If anyone still following this thread the OP suggested I pass on some links that I have already sent to her :

www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/ This home page has everything on it, but plenty of maths in there.

www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/ An old site, but worth investigating parts that still work.

www.ictgames.com/ Another old site; I particularly like "Save the Whale" number bonds of ten.

www.coolmath-games.com/0-snoring-game/index.html This snoring elephant is fun! Also on the same site are Fractals.

uptoten.com/ Only part of this site is free, but some amusing stuff on it.

Hope some of this is of some use to some of you.

Cheers

Ferguson · 27/08/2012 19:23

Sorry - I done it again: forgot to convert links. Try agn :

Hi -

If anyone still following this thread the OP suggested I pass on some links that I have already sent to her :

www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/ This home page has everything on it, but plenty of maths in there.

www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/ An old site, but worth investigating parts that still work.

www.ictgames.com/ Another old site; I particularly like "Save the Whale" number bonds of ten.

www.coolmath-games.com/0-snoring-game/index.html This snoring elephant is fun! Also on the same site are Fractals.

uptoten.com/ Only part of this site is free, but some amusing stuff on it.

Hope some of this is of some use to some of you.

Cheers

Haberdashery · 27/08/2012 21:40

Thanks so much to everyone who has contributed so far. It's lovely to have some new ideas of what to talk about. I taught DD today how to construct a perpendicular line with a compass and she loved it (I fear this may be rather old-fashioned but she had a happy time making squares and rectangles of coloured paper and then stringing them into a necklace).

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RueDeWakening · 27/08/2012 22:34

You can introduce the idea of angles using either a stick in the sun, or (quicker) a pencil and a torch - hold the pencil on a table, hold the torch at different angles from it and observe what happens to the shadow. Doing it with a stick, if you mark the shadow position every hour or so, you end up with a crude sundial at the end, too.

Tinuviel · 28/08/2012 00:34

here

Books called Venn Perplexors are great and book A is very easy and accessible to younger kids. later ones are good for general knowledge too as they give you a Venn diagram and you have to decide what the circles represent.

Cherrypi · 28/08/2012 01:06

This site is great for all ages. nrich.maths.org/public/

Haberdashery · 29/08/2012 15:02

Thanks everyone - am bookmarking/copying everything into a document. You're all really kind. I have tons of ideas now!

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EcoLady · 29/08/2012 16:37

Have you come across Nrich? nrich.maths.org/public/
Their 'stages' correspond to English Key Stages. Put the area of maths you are interested in into their Search box and see what comes up! They are all 'investigation' type puzzles, often very open-ended.

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