mathmom's blog

Amanda has been doing the Art of Problem Solving Pre-Algebra course. It's about the opposite of, "do 100 problems almost the same using this technique.  Now do 100 more problems on the next technique."  They stress problem solving, applying techniques in creative ways, and learning through struggling with the topic.  To begin each chapter they give 5-6 problems that illustrate the topics in the chapter.  First the student struggles with the problems and maybe (or maybe not) discovers the methods used in the chapter to solve the problems and why they work.  Then the student reads the chapter to connect what she's learned through struggling with the mathematical theorems. Some of the problems are really hard.  Sometimes Amanda sits staring at a problem not doing anything.  I've encouraged her to write something and she seems to be picking that up.  But it's not always obvious what to do so sometimes I help her to start. The problem is that some...

Eleanor is still gunning for me to dress up as a Star Trek character for Halloween.  I usually go as the scariest person I can think of---a MATH TEACHER!  Today she came up with a compromise. She says I should dress up as the EMH Mark 3: the Emergency Mathematical Hologram.  "Please state the nature of the Mathematical emergency..."

The kids have been getting into Star Trek lately.  I've written about their costumes.  They also have been spouting lines--- Seven of Nine is a favorite: "Efficiency is relative," for example. Luke write a paper about Kill Devil Hills and the Wright Brothers, and he included the Enterprise in his history of flight.  Not sure that's right, but he's just in fourth grade, so who cares? The best part is that he seems to have adopted me as his captain.  He's absolutely tickled that you can call female captains "sir," so sometimes when I ask him to do something he'll stand at attention and say, "Sir!  Yes Sir!" The funny thing is that he actually goes and does it.  If he weren't treating me as a captain, he'd likely argue or complain or put it off.  But when I'm a captain, he obeys.  Now if only I could be more like Janeway...

When I was younger (read: before I had kids) I always thought of leaving as a point in time.  Think of the graph of a line crossing the x-axis at x=2.  When x is less than 2, f(x) is negative.  When x is greater than 2 f(x) is positive, and the graph is only equal to zero at one point, x=2.  Similarly, I thought that leaving was one time, say 12:00.  Earlier than 12, you haven't left, and after 12, you've already left.   This worked pretty well for many years, but then I had kids and the strategy developed problems.  I learned to try to be early to places (if you're not early, then you're late).  I learned to leave time for traffic depending on the time of day.  But even leaving time to be early and for traffic,  I still ended up being late, even when I left at precisely the time I expected. Then I realized that the problem was that it took between 5 and 10 minutes to leave, maybe more if I were leaving for the whole day and ha...

For Halloween this year, the kids have embraced Star Trek.  Amanda is going as a Vulcan (she's dressing as Spock from the reboot movies---no slinky girl-costumes for her!), Luke is going as a pile of Tribbles.  Eleanor wanted to go as Captain Janeway. I love Captain Janeway.  Almost everything she does makes me happy.  So we could have taken a couple of long sleeved t-shirts and done some creative cutting to make a costume.  However, I thought, "I've always wanted to make a real uniform..." This is the costume pattern we bought after a short Google search:  Etsy Pattern The first line of the instructions says that if you are not an experienced costume maker, you should give up and find someone who is.  That may be.  However, there are actually lots of other people online making costumes as well, and some of them post helpful pictures.  This one shows all the pieces and how they go together:  pattern pieces There are other useful...

A few weeks ago we got our new deck furniture and started sitting outside more.  We noticed that a few hummingbirds were flying around.  I have owned a hummingbird feeder in the past: a beautiful pottery feeder given to me by my mother-in-law. We never installed it, because until now there was never a spot to hang the feeder which was both visible from the kitchen (where I spend most of my time) and accessible for changing the food.  The new deck changed that, and so Michael bought a feeder.  Well, about an hour after Michael installed the feeder, there were a few birds zooming by to investigate.  Within the day, the birds were landing and feeding.  They were awesome.  We could sit in the kitchen nook and watch them through the windows, and even made plans to remove some screens so we could watch them more easily. Unfortunately, a few days after we installed the feeder, the hummingbirds seemed to have disappeared.  Probably they migrated south...

In order to keep track of my life, I put a 2x3 foot white board on the pantry door.  I put a simple schedule on it, the meal plan for the week, shopping lists for the various stores, and to do lists.  I've started asking the kids to write things on the board. If we run out of something (chai, for example) and it's not on the list, I have little sympathy.  The only problem is that this leads to children editing the existing lists. For example, I wrote "cough drops" on the list yesterday.  With a little editing, this becomes "cough oreos."  "Granola bars" becomes "granola bears."  Usually, though, the board is used for good. This morning I came down to find that Luke had written on the to do list.  From what I could tell, it read "Microwave Luke's Clothes." Really.  Amanda and I had left before he wrote it.  I texted Michael and he had no idea.  When I got Luke in the car after school I asked him and he burst out laughin...

Amanda is allergic to dairy, which is a problem for buying ice cream.  It doesn't interfere with finding delicious ice cream---that is readily available in all sorts of flavors (Amanda likes Salted Caramel made with coconut milk, for example).  But dairy free ice cream is really tremendously expensive, especially in comparison with the regular ice cream we only buy if it is on a "buy 2 get 3 free" sale.  So Amanda's ice cream is about 3 times as expensive as the dairy ice cream, and comes in little tiny containers that have only 3 servings in them to start.  Very inconvenient. This means that Michael and I were talking about buying an ice cream maker, to cut down on expense, make more flavors, and increase convenience.  After discussing the relative merits of compressor vs. freezer chilled makers, we decided to put off the purchase. A while later we were chatting in the car about liquid nitrogen. Michael explained about the container for carrying liquid nitr...