Summer Science Fun?

Every summer, my kids and I do something called "Terrific Tuesdays". On these days we go do something with friends like play tennis, go on a hike, a picnic far away, the zoo, etc. To keep boredom at bay on the other days, I am going to do a science day each week during the summer. I thought about blogging the projects we do and document with pictures, would this be something you are interested in reading about? Would it be helpful for me to blog what the schedule would be? Let me know if you are interested in this or not.

Mental Math Idea

Put students into pairs and give each pair four dice. One student will foll all four dice and the other student must add them quickly in their heads. The student who is rolling can check with a calculator, but the point is that they both get a chance to do mental math. A pair of dice can be used to work with multiplication in the same fashion. If you are working with negative numbers, you can do that as well with subtraction.

Fill My Pocket

Here's another fun idea from "Help Your Child Excel in Math". For version one of this game, you need ten pennies and a pocket (or cup, piggy bank, etc). This game is for beginning to understand addition. Ask your student to:

• Count as you put some pennies (2) in your pocket and write the numeral (2)


• Count as you put some more pennies (1) in your pocket and finish writing the number sentence that tells what happened (2 + 1 = ?)


• "Guess" the number of pennies in your pocket and write the sum in the number sentence (2 +1= 3)

• Take pennies our of your pocket and count to check. If the guess is correct, the child keeps the pennies. If not, you keep the pennies.

I don't know about you, but I am sure there have been times that you are standing in line with your child needing something to entertain them. This is a great game for that! I usually have some pennies with me, you could even do it with nickels and such.

Variable Look Outs

The beginnings of algebra can be an intimidating place for kids. Suddenly, we go from working with numbers to now throwing in variables. Math can seem so abstract but there is much we can do to help kids be more visual with math and on the look out for those variables.

Abigail Norfleet James has wonderful suggestions for math with variables. These ideas come from, "Teaching the Female Brain".

To bring out that the letters mean different variables, get highlighters in many colors and make a dot over the top of similar variables. IE:

22-3x = 8 x for one variable equations, or

3x + 4y = 12-2y + 2x for two varialbe equations.



Dr. James also suggests bringing in real apples and oranges (or anything to stand in for objects) and arrange them as in the equation. In the example earlier, use small blocks to stand in for the numbers. Use a big block for the variable and little blocks for the numbers. Put out the blocks as indicated in the problem-22 little blocks, 3 big blocks, and 8 big blocks. Let the students move the blocks around until they can see what value each big block has to have to make the equation work.