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I love math. When I was in high school, I would work in my Algebra and Geometry books for fun when I was board. I love to teach it and use it at every opportunity. And while my children do own math books, being a relaxed, unschooler type, we don't always get around to using them. Fortunately for us, the real world offers many opportunities to teach complex math applications and techniques at all different level. Especially for the unschooled child with an over-achieving, ADD, border-line sadistic mother.
And one of my favorite activities is GRAPHING! I know it sounds wierd, but think about it. They are so visual and colorful and tell you so much without having to read one single word! They come in all different shapes and sizes. And you can manipulate the data just like an artist can mixes colors on a palate. (you're really starting to feel sorry for my kids!). But where, oh where do you find the opportunity to unschool that? I thought I would share some of my past "inspirations". For what it's worth, my kids loved these activities and I never had to pressure them to keep track of data.
COUNT CARS: One day when my son was about 10, he started counting the different make of cars that we drove by. After a week of this, I decided to take advantage of this recent obsession and came up with the brilliant idea of taking a survey of the cars in the city. We made a chart for collecting data (tic marks) and tackled four different parking lots (on 4 different day, each in a different part of town) and collected the data from 300 cars in each parking lot; DS kept track of the makes and DD (7 yo then) kept track of the colors. We would bring home the data, and each of the kids would color in their charts/bar graphs to see which were the most popular. We really did do 1200 cars (I must have been nuts). The greatest thing was that about 2 week after we finished, the local business journal published a graph of the Top 10 makes of cars registered that year. My son's data had 9 of the top 10 correct and 7 of them in the same order. That was cool. (White Fords are very popular here).
OLYMPIC MEDALS: This is an easy one for younger students. Every day we would check the paper for the new medal wins and counts ad would graph the results. Each country had three bars to color in: gold, silver, and bronze. Very basic, easy for young ones, requires only paper and colored pencils (or crayons).
NEW PUPPIES: As it so happened while we were graphing the Olympics, our dog decided to have puppies. Being the over-dilligent, homeschool mom; I quickly made a "growth chart" for each puppy, two hole punched them, and put them in a nice file folder. My dd (10yo then) would weigh & measure the puppies every other day, record each puppy's data on it's chart, as well as on a master chart (line graph) with each puppy represented by a different color. Additionally, she would log the developmental milestones on each puppy's chart (open eyes, walking, barking, eating solid food, etc.). This was a terrific exercise! And since it involved something personal to her, she never batted and eye! I highly recommend this one.
SPORTS SCORES: This was one of my favorites. My dd is on a bowling league. Last year (14yo), I decided to have her keep track of all the scores (hers and her teammates) every week and keep a few different running graphs. She had a notebook with graph paper that she took with her each week. She would write down their scores and at the end of the day, figure her average and handicap for the next week, and update the various graphs. One graph was a combination bar/line graph. This showed her scores in a vertical bar graph, with her teammates scores in different color lines going horizontally across her scores. Another graph, was a stacking bar graph which showed the teams progress each week. When I was feeling especially saddistic, I mean enthusiatic, we would make pie charts! This is where the real math comes in. For those of you who don't know how to do this: Step 2: Find the percentage of the whole that each persons score represents by converting the fraction into a percent. (i.e. score 97 / series 325 = 30%) Step 2: Figure out 30% of 360 degrees (108 degrees) Step 3: Using protractor & compass, measure/draw an 108 degree arc of a circle and color it in.
The secret to keeping these activities fun, is to spread them out over time, rather than trying to do it all in a 4 hour sitting. Look around your child's real life and see what opportunities exist. Let me know what you come up with. My youngest is 15yo now. She can read just about any kind of chart/graph. Next year I think I'll teach her how to put it all into Excel and manipulate data on the computer. I just need to come up with another graphing topic. Any ideas? |
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