*Thursday night is family night! I hope you all can make it! I always look forward to this nice time together.
How are you? Math has been on the kids brain so much lately. It's in so much of our lives when we stop to think, isn't it? As we usually do, the friends like to calculate how many kids are here in the morning, and we often take these small moments to think about quantity and addition and subtraction.
The kids are beginning to make the leap between counting repeatedly to get their answer and logically working it out because they are gaining more number sense. Today at the moment of this discussion we had thirteen friends and two teachers. Now some friends initially counted all the PEOPLE in the class, while others counted the KIDS. This meant they came to different numbers. When I put the problem by asking if we have fifteen people and two teachers, how many kids, many friends wanted to add. Subtraction can be a tricky concept. Sometimes it is good to look at something manipulable, so I created the representation below. The friends began seeing the number fifteen as the whole and two and thirteen as the parts that make up this whole. As we go through these days, the friends are making new leaps of understanding every moment!
Last week the friends were talking about symmetry, balance and circles in their work. This caused us to think about the designs and relationship between shapes in mandalas. The friends who are working on this begin to see how numbers work together. For example, if you start with 8 sticks in the center and have 5 jewels represent the petals for each of the 8, then how many jewels do you need? Wait, isn't this multiplication? Here are a few of our unfinished pieces.
It is so fascinating how serendipitous things can be. Our new friend Bridget B's mum is an artist and mandalas are her work! The friends have been inspired by her creations and the titles she gave them. They have been thinking about the math elements of these creations, but also the symbolism that can be represented by the person who creates them. A few friends have work in progress going in class, come in and check these out!
We also looked at a few videos of mandalas being made. The first one has subtitles, but I mostly summarized the bare essentials and we watched in silence for much of it. Since the kids are interested in the process and how they make these, I didn't read all of the philosophical elements. They were mostly interested in how the work unfolded, from the middle to the outside layer. And there can be so much planning involved! The second one had many great time lapse moments and the kids were interested in the tools and the way the artists manipulated the sand. Also the fact that they spent five days working on this! So interesting. Let me know if there are other details the kids notice on further viewings!
Here's a third one because it was fun to see how someone got excited about creating mandalas with food! :)
I hope you are having a great week! Love, Jennifer
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