Part of Wordless Wednesday…
I’ve planted all of this Amazoy grass from Zoysia Farms.
All of it.
Doesn’t sound bad, right?
Well, each of those rectangles are 15 inches x 10 inches. And we cut them into one-square-inch pieces before planting them.
You don’t have to be a mathematician to know the answer. It’s “HOLY COW MY BODY HURTS!”
(Sometimes the right answer isn’t a number.)
Share your thoughts in the comments or on twitter/x.
What did the hexagon say to the trapezoid?
“I’m twice the shape you’ll ever be!”
Corny – right?
I made that joke up while playing with Melissa & Doug’s Animal Pattern Blocks.
It has ten different animals (on five two-sided boards) and over 50 plastic shapes in tons of colors to complete the pictures.
Of course you can talk to your toddler about hexagons, triangles, parallelograms (which are also rhombuses in this math toy) and trapezoids. But you can do even more!
All the shapes can make the bigger ones. So it’s not just a bunch of shapes that may or may not work – this toy is designed with some serious thought.
Here are some questions you can ask while playing:
Pick a shape and cram them into the hexagons!
This is huge in math. Since all shapes can be made of triangles, answering this questions preps your little one for some big geometry stuff.
And after you play with those a while, you might notice how the number of sides of a shape compare to the number of smaller shapes that can fit in it.
Get a set of Animal Pattern Blocks and have fun!
Share your thoughts in the comments or on twitter/x.
Part of Wordless Wednesday…
Share your thoughts in the comments or on twitter/x.
This is the 5th in the draft purge series where I’m throwing stuff out over a three week period.
One month after starting MathFour.com, I came across an article about GeoGebra. I was quite taken by the software, but a little overwhelmed.
I’m not much into technology – at least when it comes to math. So the power of the tool was much more inhibiting for me than it was empowering.
Indeed this article was first “drafted” back in March of 2011 – more than a year ago. It only had the link to that article in it. Not much of a draft.
Lucky for us, math is math. It doesn’t change much over a year (or even a few hundred years).
So GeoGebra is pretty much as useful (and as scary) as it was a year ago.
But like all good heros, leaders and people stupid enough to think they might be either, I’m diving in. Regardless of my fear.
So I found the GeoGebra Quickstart guide and started reading. I downloaded GeoGebra and cranked it up.
The Quickstart has three examples to try. The first one is un-intimidating – merely involving a triangle and a circle.
So I did it.
Turns out you can “share” your work on GeoGebra – those guys are pretty clever, I must say!
Click here to see my first ever attempt at GeoGebra goodies. Notice I named my triangle vertices and the center of the circle with real names – fun!
Following the directions, I learned about the Move Tool. Which means you can move just about anything – the whole triangle, the circle or any of the vertices!
Check out the “dance” I did with my circle and triangle:
I’m looking forward to playing some more. But I still have my concerns.
I’ll share those tomorrow. For now, I’m just going to enjoy the tool!
Have you played with GeoGebra? Will you? How do you use it? Tell us in the comments.
Don’t forget to tweet it out, too!
I saw natural math ability yesterday!
K8 was hunting Easter eggs at Mawmaw & Pawpaw’s house. She saw an egg inside the sandbox. As she reached into the box she realized the egg was too far away.
She was standing where the footprints are. The egg was where the striped egg is:
The “easy” answer was to step inside the sandbox. But she wanted no part of the gritty sand.
With no hesitation, she moved from her location, around the sandbox to the new spot:
This took some effort because she had to squat to get under the ladder. But she had seen that avoiding the sand was possible if she accessed the egg from the other side.
With no vocabulary or formal training (indeed she’s 2 1/2 years old) she identified perpendicular distance! She assessed which side of the square sandbox would minimize this distance. And she acted on that assessment.
It’s normal for parents to believe their children are especially smart, gifted or brilliant. I believe that all children are these things.
Kids have a natural math ability. And so do you.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments and make sure to share this story with your twitter network!
I have been working with eHow.com to get some common math questions answered. One of the questions was, “How are the areas of a rectangle and triangle with the same base and height related?”
Curiously, all rectangles can be cut into triangles. And all triangles can be doubled to make a rectangle. Watch this video – and then get out the construction paper, scissors and glue.
Grab a kid and have some fun watching them discover!
Have thoughts on this? Share them in the comments. And don’t forget to share it on twitter/X.
Daughter got a set of Magna-Tiles geometric shapes from her aunt for Christmas. I distracted her long enough to get some great photos so I could write about this amazing toy.
When teaching math, you pull out any shapes you can from anywhere in the house. And sometimes stuff you can buy trumps all the other stuff. Not often – the home holds tons of great geometric manipulatives – but sometimes.
The magna-tiles are clear, so they’re pretty and you can shine light through them.
Also they’re magnetic – so they stick together and stick on the fridge. Great storage for fast usage!
And then – here’s the best part – they’re geometric shapes! Two sizes of squares, three sizes and shapes of triangles.
You’d think that being geometrical was the first requirement. But really – clear, pretty and magnetic go a long way!
Get these fabulous shapes at Valtech! Co. on Amazon.com, or at your local teacher/homeschool supply store.
Do you have some? Do you want some? Share your thoughts in the comments.
![[Wordless Wednesday] Trapezoid Christmas Tree](http://mathfour.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/MathFourXmasTreeTrapezoidFI-1.jpg)
