As Strange as It Seems

I love math! I know it probably seems crazy. My Teacher Helen Walters is fantastic! She makes math fun. (I know, another crazy concept). She teaches us so many fun games, brain teasers and teaching applications. Who wouldn’t love that?

Here is a question that she gave us. See if you can get it right.

There are 7 girls on a bus. Each girl has 7 backpacks. In each backpack there are seven big cats. For every big cat, there are 7 little cats. How many legs are on the bus?

If you can get it right, you will get an imaginary smile from me.

Like I said before we do a lot of different activities.

The first activity we did was an experiment to see how many blows it took to move a few different objects. The objects were a paper clip, rubber band, a marker, and a leaf. We had to make our own estimations before and then compare it to how many it actually took.

Helen was walking around the classroom taking pictures of us as well and she said, "Wow! You guys look like retards!" Thanks Helen.  

The second activity we did was to learn about the “foot” came to be.  There’s an old story that goes a little something like this. There was a king a long time ago that wanted to give his Queen (wife) a special gift. This was tricky seeing how she was the queen and already had everything. She, however, did not have a bed so the king decided to have one made for her. She laid down on the ground in her pj’s and the king measured around her, using his feet. The bed was supposed to be made 6’ X 3’ in order to fit the queen. The message was passed down and the bed was made. The bed was made too small because the size of foot that was used to measure the bed was significantly smaller. Because the king realized this problem they decided to use his foot as the standard “foot”. This is also why they call a ruler a “ruler” (because the king was a ruler…get it? Pretty clever huh?)

Anyways, we talked about measurements and how it is standard for everybody. We cut our measurements of our own feet and did a bunch of different activities to compare the size of our feet to the rest of our body.

Did you know that you are about as tall as 7 of your feet? How about, the distance around your thumb twice is the circumference of your wrist? Last, Did you know twice around your neck is the same as your waist?

Along with measurement, we were given a giants hand print. We then had to draw a picture of this giant using chalk in the church parking lot (we have classes in the church) with correct proportions based on the size of his hand. It was quite hilarious to draw our manly/studly giant. 

The last fun thing we do is play with blocks! We had to work out questions, like figuring out how many blocks could fit into each point and side of an equilateral triangle with no corner and side having the same amount and only having 21 blocks. Try it. It is kind of tricky. 

Now do you think that math can be fun?