Insect Symmetry – A Family Math Night Activity

Insect Symmetry – A Family Math Night Activity

Math and art. It’s always a huge hit at our Family Math Night events. Since we were using our Gellin’ with Geometry kit and the event was in the spring, I decided to tie geometry and spring together and came up with a springtime symmetry activity. Enter our insect friends. The type of symmetry I focused on was bilateral symmetry. It’s the same as mirror or reflection symmetry except that when it comes to biological creatures – like our insect friends – biologists call…

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What Do You Notice? Musical Math Notes

What Do You Notice? Musical Math Notes

Back in November, I sent out a newsletter with a new activity I had created for my Family Math Night: Musical Math Notes. I got a lot of great comments on it so I thought I’d share the What Do You Notice? poster that I also included at that event. A What Do You Notice? poster gives students (and their families) an opportunity to think about and share their thoughts about the math they see on the poster. But I’ll admit, this poster was tougher…

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Tessellation Sign-In Quilt

Tessellation Sign-In Quilt

Kids love it when it’s all about them. So I thought it would be fun to have them be the ones to sign in at my recent Family Math Night event. But just not any sign-in. A tessellation quilt sign-in. As families entered the event, students signed their name on a large pattern block of their choosing which I had cut out of poster board. Then they glued it to our ever growing tessellation quilt. Here’s what it looked like…

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Musical Math Notes: A Family Math Night Activity

Musical Math Notes: A Family Math Night Activity

I’m always looking for ways to show students (and parents!) that math is everywhere. That was one of my goals when I created a fun station for a recent Family Math Night event: Musical Math Notes. The Station My idea was to have students “compose” their own music by placing notes on a staff* and then playing their music on real keyboards. It was a huge hit at our event, and, as is always the case when you do anything new,…

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Fibonacci Flower Garden Collaborative Project

Fibonacci Flower Garden Collaborative Project

I’m always looking for ways to combine math and art into a fun activity. I’m also always looking for ways to show students that we’re surrounded by math in ways we aren’t necessarily aware of. That brings me to a recent Family Math Night Collaborative Project. In this project I used the Fibonacci numbers to have participants create a Fibonacci Flower Garden. Fibonacci numbers are a sequence of numbers that are generated by adding the previous two numbers starting with 0 and…

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