Lego Fireman +

At the Toys R Us store, we saw an amazing LEGO creation.  He was a life-sized LEGO fireman with a walkie-talkie, an oxygen tank and even an oxygen tank gauge.  He must have taken a long time to build.

Let your students watch the short movie of the Fireman, consider what they might like to understand about him and what else they might need to know.  Then, using our block measurements, encourage them to underestimate and over estimate his construction time and LEGO block quantity, and then average their class estimates.  How close will they be to the actual time for construction and quantity of LEGO blocks?

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U. S. Open Tennis Tournament prizes have been awarded

The U.S. Open Tennis Tournament has just been completed. It is possibly the biggest tennis tournament in the world. We've updated our numbers and focused on the prize money.  As students ponder the amounts for various wins, they will work with patterns, use number sense, reasoning, and have the opportunity to model real-life situations with algebra.

U.S._Open2023.pdf

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Autumnal Equinox 2023

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Updated for 2023!

Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 06:50 UTC (2:50 am EST), will be the Autumnal Equinox.  It is the time of year when an imaginary plane would pass through both the Earth's Equator and the center of the Sun.  At this auspicious moment the number of sunlight hours and night time hours are about the same over much of the Earth.  In the Northern Hemisphere we move into the Fall season.

We have three possible activities for you to use in your classrooms.

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The Moroccan Earthquake and the Richter scale

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Friday evening, September 8th, a powerful 6.8 magnitude earthquake hit Morocco southwest of Marrakech.

What does a 6.8 magnitude earthquake mean?  How powerful was that?  What is a seismometer and a seismograph?  What is the amplitude of a seismograph reading?  Why did the quake happen in Morocco?

Use our Richter scale activity to introduce your students to logarithmic Richter magnitudes.

The activity: MoroccoEarthquake.pdf

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Little Amal walks across the United States

With our world in so much turmoil and refugees trying to survive hardships by traveling away from their homes, the story of Little Amal is powerful, timely, and touching.

Of course there is a lot of math in creating a 12-foot tall puppet, controlled by 3 people, that can show fear, surprise, wonder, and the humanity of being a refugee.  Bring the story of Little Amal to your classroom with this timely art.

The activity: LittleAmal-2023.pdf

To see where Little Amal will be across the U.S. from September 9, 2023 to November 5, 2023, check out Little Amal's Events

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Will the Barbie movie out-perform Avatar at the box office?

The Barbie Movie is still doing well in the theaters.  It has only been 6 1/2 weeks since its debut.  Do you think that it can out-earn Avatar?  Students study the numbers, recognize the need for an inflation adjustment, get to share their observations about the movie and its messages, recognize that a graph helps to visualize the data, and draw their own conclusions about how far Barbie will go as a money-maker.

The activity: BarbieSuccess.pdf

CCSS: 3.OA, 3.NBT, 4.OA, 4.MD, 5.NBT, 5.MD, 5.G, 6.RP

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