The Talking Stick Blog

News, Updates, Program Recaps, and Homeschooling Information

CHROMATIC #, WEEK 6: No Mention of Aliens

(April 14, 2015)  In case you haven’t been following along, a bunch of 6-8 year olds have been tackling the Hadwiger-Nelson Problem (to determine the chromatic number of the plane) with the support of a narrative tale about aliens on a planet called Botso.  This week (our final), I dropped all references to the story.  The group engaged in an…

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Chromatic #, Week 5, Making Progress

(April 7, 2015) We started today with child-produced function machines, then moved into our old standby, the Hadwiger-Nelson Problem. INTRODUCING DOMAINS OF FUNCTIONS M approached me before class with a slip of paper with her rule written on it: +10.  She explained that she had only practiced with numbers up to 1,000.  What to do if someone called out an…

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Symmetry: The Questions (ESCHER #2)

(January 13, 2015)  For the most part, I’m going to let the pictures do the talking this week.  They tell the mathematical story of our session via the students’ work and question. We continue to wrangle over the definition/types of symmetry.  I posed 2 new questions this week: 1)  Can you get a mirror image of an object using rotation…

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