Our Journey Westward » engineering http://ourjourneywestward.com Thu, 10 May 2012 17:55:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 More Living Math and Science http://ourjourneywestward.com/2009/01/more-living-math-and-science/ http://ourjourneywestward.com/2009/01/more-living-math-and-science/#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:56:05 +0000 Cindy http://ourjourneywestward.com/?p=1107 I meant to put this post up before Christmas break – oops!

I hope you aren’t getting bored with all the fun math we’ve been doing from Hardhatting in a Geo-World.  I just can’t help sharing what has been a GREAT math & science unit!  If you are getting bored, you’ll be glad to know this is the last post!  :)   The other posts can be found here and here.

We did one last lesson on bridges.  This demonstrated the importance of strong anchors for a suspension bridge to be strong.  (Yes, that’s our art table.  We needed to place thumbtacks somewhere and the art table did the job.  Yes, those are baby feet standing on the art table.  He wants to be part of every activity we do!)

We also did a couple of thought-provoking activities concerning geometric shapes.  Do you know if you’re a square, tall rectangle or short rectangle?  We do!  Just measure your height and arm span to find out.  Equal measurements mean you are a square.  Longer height than arm span makes you a tall rectangle, while shorter height than arm span makes you a short rectangle.

And this activity involved predicting shapes when circles were attached and cut in various ways.

As of January 5th, we’re back on our regular math schedule – three days per week of textbook, two days of living math/problem solving/logic.  I’ll continue to share living math ideas, but they won’t come quite as frequently.  Until then, happy math lessons!

Related posts:

  1. Math and Science – Bridges
  2. Living Math
  3. Living Math – Graphs Galore
]]> http://ourjourneywestward.com/2009/01/more-living-math-and-science/feed/ 3 Math and Science – Bridges http://ourjourneywestward.com/2008/12/math-and-science-bridges/ http://ourjourneywestward.com/2008/12/math-and-science-bridges/#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:22:35 +0000 Cindy http://ourjourneywestward.com/?p=1080 Our “math break” continues to bring lively and rich lessons!  One of the projects from Hardhatting in a Geo-World concerned bridge construction.  We had to make six different bridges and test their strength.

After completing the activity and filling in the chart provided, I had the kiddos show their findings with homemade graphs.

The book talked a little about why some bridges were stronger than others, but we wanted to know more.  I found this very cool site linked from THINK’s blog.

We also decided to complete her Bridge Challenge.

Caleb’s first attempt (not so strong.)

Caleb’s second attempt (much stronger.)

Mahayla’s bridge.

Tomorrow – we’re off to do some Christmas problem solving!  You can find some links here.  Happy Christmas learning!

Related posts:

  1. A Thanksgiving Math and Science Activity
  2. Christmas Science Fun
  3. Christmas Math
]]> http://ourjourneywestward.com/2008/12/math-and-science-bridges/feed/ 3