Lesson 19- Everything Math

·         By overlapping two circles, you can make three different areas . How many different areas can you make with two squares?

I gave each of the kids a piece of paper and let them play around with the problem for a few minutes, and the kids found a way of making nine different areas by overlapping two squares.

·         Do a very easy Sudoku puzzle (below)

I made a big mistake here. I should’ve brought Sudoku puzzles that are 4x4, or instead, Sudoku puzzles that have pictures instead of numbers. I didn’t realize that these kids are still very little! They can’t solve Sudoku puzzles this hard (especially that some of the kids didn’t know how to do Sudoku puzzles) unless they get a lot of help from somebody else.

·         Play Mastermind

This is a little too hard for them for now. It’s possible to play this game with the kids, but they need a lot of hints and explanations during the game, which is fine, but don’t expect them to be able to figure it out on their own.

·         10 adult people are trying to crowd under one small umbrella, but nobody gets wet. How is this possible?

“They can stand on each other’s shoulders and the top person can hold the umbrella” – THIS IS THE SOLUTION THAT ALL LITTLE KIDS OFFER AT FIRST (even I solved it this way when I was solving it when I was 5 or 6). I don’t know what is so obvious about that solution, but all little kids seem to think that it’s the best way to solve this problem. Later, a few kids realized that the 10 people could be in a house or under something- that’s a good solution. Then they couldn’t think of any more solutions, so I asked “Where/when can you get wet?” and they said “in the rain”. So, then I gave them a minute or so to think, and then they realized “wait, you never said that it was raining outside!”

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- What should the next picture in the pattern be?

I first let them look at it for a little bit and try to figure out what the pattern is. Then after seeing that they weren’t getting anywhere I covered half of each of the terms, and asked them what it looked like. Then, when they realized the pattern, I asked them to continue the pattern for the next 2 terms.

·         Which of these shapes does this cat not have

a)      Rectangles b) Squares c) Circles d) Triangles

They didn’t understand this problem, so to make it easier, I rounded the tips of the cats ears too, and then the saw that there weren’t any triangles in the cat.