Review of Flight 1-2-3, by Maria van Lieshout

Contemporary, Mathematical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review, Travel 0

Flight 1-2-3

by Maria van Lieshout

Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2013. 36 pages.
Starred Review

As a counting book, and as the ideal book to familiarize a small child with plane flight, this book is wonderful.

A note at the back reads, “Typeset in Frutiger by Swiss designer Adrian Frutiger. Since this distinctive and legible typeface was commissioned in 1968 by Charles de Gaulle International Airport in France, it has been in use on airport signage all over the world.”

The book begins, “When taking a flight, what do you see?” We’ve got 1 Airport, 2 Luggage carts, 3 Check-in desks. Most of the people are the iconic figures you see on airport signage, except the family we’re following. The boy has a yellow cap and backpack, and his parents distinctively come along on the journey through the airport and security to the gates and the airplane.

The numbers are fun, too. After getting to “10 Gates,” it skips to “100 Fastened seat belts,” then “2,000 Miles. 3,200 Kilometers.” And “33,000 Feet. 10,000 Meters. A million places to explore.”

The final page celebrates “One happy meeting.”

This is just a lovely book to look at. The simple font and iconic pictures are perfect for small children to easily see what’s going on. And they will be able to find the things from the book in the airport, whatever airport they may happen to visit.

I so wish this book had existed when my children were small and we were flying around Europe! As it is, I think this will spark a “Things That Go” theme for my next Mother Goose storytime. I want to let all the parents know about this wonderful book!

chroniclekids.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/flight_123.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

The Prime Factorization Blanket!

Mathematical, Prime Factorization 2

Yes! My Masterpiece is finished!

What is this, you ask? This is a Prime Factorization Blanket!

With colors, it shows the prime factorization of all the integers from 1 to 99.

Here is the entire blanket, laid out flat:

Here’s how it works: Every prime number gets a color. The numbers start in the lower left corner.
I left a space for 0.
1 is the background color, white.
Then the next color is 2, a prime, so it gets its own color, blue.
3 is prime, and gets its own color, yellow.
4 is 2 x 2, so that square is two sections of blue. (You can tell on the blanket that there are two sections.)
5 is prime, and gets a new color, green.
6 = 2 x 3, so that square is part blue and part yellow. And so on.

I’ve got 0 through 9 on the first row, 10 through 19 in the next row, then 20 through 29, and so on through the top row, which is 90 through 99.

To show it more clearly, let’s look at each quadrant. Here’s the bottom left quadrant:

I put in the factors for each color. (After a few colors, I stopped putting in the “x” symbol for times.) I put a reference number on the left side so you can easily see which row. This set has 1 through 4, 10 through 14, 20 through 24, 30 through 34, and 40 through 44.

Now let’s look at the bottom right quadrant:

This picture shows 5 through 9, 15 through 19, 25 through 29, 35 through 39, and 45 through 49. For example, see if you can spot 48, which has a prime factorization of 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 3. Or look at 38, right below it, which equals 2 x 19.

By the way, this blanket is for my little niece, the daughter of my brother, who is, if it’s possible, even more of a math geek than me. On the 17th of December, my sister-in-law had an ultrasound, and we learned that the baby would be a girl, so I chose shades of pink for the next primes that came up, 17 and 19!

Now here’s the upper left quadrant:

This picture shows 50-54, 60-64, 70-74, 80-84, and 90-94. Can you find 62 = 2 x 31? Or 94 = 2 x 47? (I have to note that the colors are more distinct in person, and you can tell by the garter ridges how many sections there are of each color.)

And finally, the upper right quadrant:

And this, of course, covers 55-59, 65-69, 75-79, 85-89, and 95-99.

I’m so happy to finish it! The yarn is the same as what I used for my Prime Factorization Sweater, Cotton Classic. This yarn has enough colors (most important qualification), and it’s wonderfully soft — perfect for a baby blanket. I used a lot of leftover colors from the sweater, in fact.

The only really hard part? Giving it away! But I got the *idea* because my brother’s wife was having a baby, so this seems only fair to send it to the baby, as promised. Unfortunately, she lives on the other side of the country — so the one stipulation is they must take *lots* of pictures of her with it!

In fact, I thought of a way to console myself for giving away the blanket. My next project will be a Pascal’s Triangle Shawl!

I tested out, and the shape will work great!

I loved doing the entrelac squares for the blanket — it was much much easier than the intarsia I used on the Prime Factorization Sweater. And it will be easy-peasy to make a triangle instead of a square. I’ll use factors and do Pascal’s Triangle…. More on this to come, you can be sure!

My posts on Mathematical Knitting and related topics are now gathered at Sonderknitting.

Oh, and don’t forget! If you want your own prime factorization t-shirt or tote bag, you can find them at my Cafepress shop.

Review of The Boy Who Loved Math, by Deborah Heiligman and LeUyen Pham

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

The Boy Who Loved Math

The Improbable Life of Paul Erdös

by Deborah Heiligman
pictures by LeUyen Pham

Roaring Brook Press, New York, 2013. 38 pages.
Starred Review

I’ve been looking forward eagerly to this book ever since Betsy Bird reviewed it. My hold came in today, and I am absolutely delighted! I need my own personal copy!

Now, I have a Master’s in Math. Having studied mathematics at UCLA, I’d like to think that my Erdös Number (explained in the book) is at least 4, maybe even 3. So I’m simply saying that I’m predisposed to like it.

But there’s so much here for anyone to like! Even without looking deeper (more on that later), the pictures are full of life and interest, fitting the lively descriptions of a little boy in love with numbers.

Here’s an example from page 6:

So Paul kept counting . . .
And thinking about numbers. One day, when he was 4, Paul asked a visitor when her birthday was. She told him.

What year were you born? he asked.
She told him.

What time?
She told him.

Paul thought for a moment.
Then he told her how many seconds she had been alive.

[The picture shows 1,009,152,358 in a speech bubble coming from the little boy. He’s with his Fräulein and a woman who could indeed reasonably be 32 — even the details are right!]

Paul liked that trick. He did it often.

She goes on to show Paul growing, full of movement, learning more, always thinking about numbers. I love the detail that the illustrator included at the end: “As a young boy, Paul was known to flap his arms when something particularly excited him. This behavior continued through his teen years, when his friends would often have to explain to passersby that there was nothing wrong with Paul — he was just thinking hard.” The illustrations reflect this, full of life and movement.

And the author makes a smooth transition from childhood antics to a stellar adult career:

By the time Paul was 20, he was already famous around the world for his math. People called him The Magician from Budapest.

But he still did not know how to . . .

do his laundry

or cook his food

or butter his bread.

That was not a problem.
He still lived at home and
Mama still did everything for him.

She goes on to explain his unusual, collaborative manner of living. He’d fly to different countries, staying with other mathematicians, and then he had a way of bringing out brilliance in others as well.

Now, like I said, I have a huge soft spot for mathematicians, and my heart simply warms at the picture of the big group of actual mathematicians (women included, yes indeed) discussing together number theory, combinatorics, the probabilistic method, and set theory.

So the first run through of the story is wonderful enough. A story showing a brilliant mathematician with an unconventional life who produced great mathematics and brought out brilliance in others. How many picture book biographies are there celebrating mathematicians? It simply makes me happy.

But look a little deeper. The illustrator’s note shows the incredible level of detail she worked into the illustrations. Early on, the numbers you see are amicable numbers, and worked into the buildings we have dihedral primes, good primes, Leyland primes, Mersenne primes, prime triplets, unique primes, palindromic primes, Ramanujan primes, and two-sided primes. Paul Erdös worked in graph theory, and there are diagrams in the illustrations including the famous Konigsburg Bridge problem and other famous graphs. She includes actual buildings from Budapest and actual distinguished mathematicians as well.

And this book achieved something picture book biographers aspire to — I am absolutely going to read more about Paul Erdös. But even better, this is a book that celebrates young number lovers and will encourage them that their passion is part of something grand.

I’m posting this tonight in honor of Nonfiction Monday, hosted today at

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/boy_who_loved_math.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of That’s a Possibility! by Bruce Goldstone

Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

That’s a Possibility

A Book About What Might Happen

By Bruce Goldstone

Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2013. 32 pages.
Starred Review

A book about probability for kids! Hooray! What’s more, I find it tremendously impressive, because Bruce Goldstone keeps things far, far simpler than I could possibly have done if I were trying to write such a book.

Back in my college-math-teaching days, I often taught Introduction to Statistics. That’s probably why it never would have occurred to me that it’s possible to write a book explaining probability without even using fractions. In fact, the only place where he comes close at all is in the explanation about flipping a coin: “So the odds that the coin will land heads up is 1 out of 2 possibilites. (You can also say 50%, because 50 out of 100 is the same as 1 out of 2.)”

He manages to explain every fundamental concept with pictures. The pictures are vibrant, colorful, and interesting – and they so beautifully get across the concepts.

He begins by talking about possibilities. For example, there’s a picture of a kid holding 7 animal-shaped helium balloons. He asks, “If one of these balloons POPS, will it be the monkey? That’s a possibility!”

Then he goes on to talk about when things are impossible. And then what it means to be certain. Then the concepts of “likely,” “probable,” and “improbable.” Those are easily showed with pictures. He uses colorful pictures of flowers, parrots, and gumball machines.

And he goes on beyond the concept of “equally likely outcomes” (which he doesn’t mention, but didn’t I tell you I don’t know how to keep it as simple as he does.) There’s even a page that says, “Your imagination can help you think of possibilities, too.” It shows a girl jumping into a swimming pool, and asks, “What will probably happen when this jumper hits the water?”

Then it goes on to odds and flipping a coin. He explains “independent outcomes” without using those words – the idea that no matter what has already happened, your odds of getting tails on the next toss will always be 1 out of 2.

Then he looks at colorful spinners and a simple game that uses them. Then he looks at the classics of probability theory: playing cards and dice. Instead of listing all the possibilities of a 2-dice roll, he puts pictures of all the possible rolls in a chart, using one white and one black die. Kids can see at a glance that it’s more likely to roll a 7 than any other number.

Then he takes on Combinations and Permutations, again keeping it beautifully simple. Squidgy the Bear has 10 shirts and 10 pairs of pants. We see a picture of all 100 combinations before the author asks us what are the chances he’ll wear one particular outfit.

And the culmination (about permutations), before the notes at the end, is especially fun. Rabbit, Ribbit (a frog), and Robot run in a race. What are the possible results? They’re all pictured for you. I especially like the final questions:

Can you say all the possibilities together without getting your tongue twisted? That’s a possibility, but is it probable?

The notes at the end explain some activities kids can do at home, and then define some terms (like permutations) he didn’t use earlier. This is only very slightly more complex than what went before.

So, what makes me rave about this book? He keeps it so simple! The design is magnificent, and the pictures are beautiful and colorful – and helpful at the same time. But having taught probability to college students, let me tell you, his ability to explain the concepts at an elementary-school level is nothing short of genius. Magnificent!

brucegoldstone.com
mackids.com

This review is posted today in honor of Nonfiction Monday, hosted this week at Sally’s Bookshelf.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/that’s_a_possibility.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Show Me the Awesome: Math at the Library

Mathematical 0

This month I’m excited about Show Me the Awesome: 30 Days of Self-Promotion, hosted by Liz Burns, Kelly Jensen, and Sophie Brookover. The Awesome artwork is by John LeMasney.

The idea is wonderful: Librarians talking about the awesome things they are doing.

Now, I’ve long believed that Librarians, as a whole, are tremendously undervalued. I have a sporadic series on my blog I call Librarians Help, trying to spread the word about the good we do. Read all the 30 Days of Awesome posts! If you’re a librarian yourself, you’ll get some great ideas. If you’re not, you’ll learn about some truly awesome things librarians are doing.

Mind you, I signed up to post in this series before I moved to a new home. Surely, a full month after moving, I’d be all settled in my new place, right? (Cue hysterical laughter here.)

I also signed up before booktalking season began. Today, for the first time in four years, I went to a local elementary school and talked with all seven grade levels about our Summer Reading Program and whet their appetites for some of my favorite books. I remembered how exhausting it is, but I had forgotten just how awesome it is to see all their faces listening to you tell about the books, and getting feedback that they are now determined to read some of the books you shared. I took a nap when I got home tonight, but I’m in a great mood. Getting kids excited about reading is such a mood booster!

But for my Awesome post, I already had in mind something I wanted to talk about: Math in the Library.

Before I got my MLS, my first Master’s degree was in Math. I taught college-level math for 10 years. And though I love math, the teaching job never felt like a calling, the way librarianship does. Part of what I love about the library? We don’t have to test anyone! No, at the library, we’re all about learning, and we assist learning for people who want to learn.

What’s more, I’ve always believed there’s no need whatsoever to “make” Math fun. Math *IS* fun! And we get to show that to kids!

So, what are some awesome ways recently I’ve gotten to show people how much fun Math is at the library?

Fresh in my mind, this morning I booktalked You Can Count on Monsters, by Richard Evan Schwartz, Great Estimations, by Bruce Goldstone, and Just a Second, by Steve Jenkins. But let me tell you about some programs.

First, I took Every Child Ready to Read‘s program, “Fun with Science and Math for Parents and Children,” and I changed it to “Fun with Math for Parents and Children.”

We did have fun! We emphasized the practices parents can use to build a foundation for reading in their children: Talking, Singing, Reading, Writing, and Playing. And we talked about how you can apply those things to Math as well. I outlined some things I did in an earlier post. I am hoping that some of these parents are all the more eager to count with their children as they go about their days, to talk about math, and to play games with their kids. I made sure to introduce them to bedtimemath.org, and I hope some of the parents are starting a bedtime tradition of math problems at bedtime.

See how we can take a totally different focus than a teacher has to in the classroom? I can give the parents ideas of ways to have fun, and they can choose the ones they go with. (For example, when picking up toys, ask your kids how many toys they think are on the floor? Count as you pick them up, and it will go faster!) Did you know that setting the table or matching socks are early math activities?

My other Awesome Math program that I’m excited about is called Colors and Codes. In this program, I show the kids my crazy Prime Factorization knitting projects and Prime Factorization t-shirt, to give them the idea that you can use colors to represent numbers. Then, if you use numbers 1 to 26 for the letters A to Z, you can use colors to represent letters. Which means that colors can be used to write messages.

I start with showing them prime factorization color codes and move on to other bases. Base 6 and Base 5 work well for the 26 letters, but I also show them Binary (Base 2). I show them they can also use shapes. With binary, they can use practically anything: sounds, lights, dots & dashes…. Then I have lots of foam shapes available, and let them make craft projects. They can devise their own codes using these ideas and decide what they want to say.

The program uses very sophisticated mathematical concepts — and it’s totally fun! If they don’t quite get it, well, they can make a pretty picture, and I bet later some of the ideas will come together for them. (I did give them all a hand-out to color themselves.)

Oh, and one more low-key but totally fun program I do at our branch is “Brain Games at the Library.” Playing games builds logic skills and mathematical thinking. But see how there’s no pressure, no testing, and only fun? For the Brain Games program, we give them gently used books as prizes. It’s fun to watch the kids thinking they’re getting away with something when they take a pile of books home from their wins!

All this is to say that I’m so happy I still get to teach Math! Only now I get to show people how much fun it is!

Librarians Help! Showing how Awesome Math is!

Halfway on the Prime Factorization Blanket!

Mathematical, Prime Factorization 0

I’m halfway finished with my new niece’s Prime Factorization Blanket!

That’s the good news. The bad news is that it doesn’t look like I’m going to finish before Arianna arrives. But the good thing about a blanket is that it doesn’t have a size, right?

I actually finished up to 49 a week ago. I did not take a picture and report my progress. And then — when I started on the next row and began knitting 50 — I discovered I had used the wrong color when I knitted 40! I had used the color for 3 in place of the color for 5! *shudder*

(Those who need to be brought up to speed, I explain the blanket in previous Prime Factorization posts.) 40 should be 2 x 2 x 2 x 5, so the square was divided into four sections, with three of them the color for 2 (blue), and one the color for 5 (green). But, horror of horrors, I had used the color for 3 (yellow)! And I didn’t even discover it until I after I had knitted 50 = 2 x 5 x 5, also using yellow when I should have been using green! Yikes! But then I was getting ready to start on 51 = 3 x 17, and then it dawned on me that the color for 3 is yellow, so it is NOT the color for 5, and I’d been doing it wrong!

Fortunately, it was on the end of the row, and relatively easy to fix. I took out the knitting I’d done on 50, undid the last white square in the row, and then undid just the yellow section I’d put on the top of 40. I replaced it with green, knitted the white square back, and then started up on 50.

But I’ve decided that taking a picture after each row and *checking* the numbers carefully is a good idea!

I did discover a mistake when I finished knitting my prime factorization sweater. I think it was in the rectangle for 48. But 48 has five factors, and in that piece of knitting the factor for three only was about four stitches. So I was able to pick them out and put in the correct color with a crochet hook! It would not be so easy to do on this blanket, so I am going to have to be more vigilant!

My posts on Mathematical Knitting and related topics are now gathered at Sonderknitting.

Review of One Two That’s My Shoe! by Alison Murray

Contemporary, Good for the Very Young, Mathematical, Picture Book Review, Readalouds 0

One Two That’s My Shoe!

by Alison Murray

Disney Hyperion Books, New York, 2012. First published in Great Britain in 2011. 28 pages.

Simplicity. This book has it, in a beautiful form.

I recently had the joy of being promoted to Youth Services Manager at my library branch, so I get to do children’s programs again! Tomorrow, I’m doing a Mother Goose Time for babies from birth to eighteen months. In Mother Goose Time, we mainly do rhymes and songs in the parent’s lap. But I like to work in three books that are short and simple and that the parents can read along with me.

One Two That’s My Shoe! is perfect. The text is reminiscent of the old rhyme “One Two Buckle My Shoe,” going from one to ten with a rhyme after every second number. However, this book puts a story to the rhymes. With One Two, a dog has taken a little girl’s shoe, and is running away with it.

With each number, the pictures show that many objects that the dog is running past — toys, butterflies, flowers, trees, chicks and hens. The ten hens add a little inside joke. You’d expect Nine, Ten to rhyme with “Big Fat Hen” as in “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe,” but instead the girl shoos them away, recovers her shoe, and hugs the dog with the words “Friends again!”

This book is simple. The illustrations are done with printmaking, and look old-fashioned and classic. With at most three words on a page, you can read it quickly for the little one with a short attention span, but there’s plenty to talk about. Will the dog get away with the shoe? What will stop him?

As a counting book, it’s also excellent. All the objects passed are easily counted, with none tricky to find, but covering a wide scope of objects, and variety within the objects. The objects are not identical, but it’s easy to see that they belong together. Each number is both written out in the text and represented by a numeral in a corner. Next to the numeral, there are silhouettes of the object counted in the picture, so it’s nice and clear.

This is simply a lovely first counting book, and one that parents and children won’t get tired of any time soon. I’m happy to show it off at Mother Goose Time tomorrow.

disneyhyperionbooks.com
12thatsmyshoe.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/12_thats_my_shoe.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Librarians Help! – More Math!

Mathematical 0

This was a crazy week for me for programs. I don’t know what I was thinking (Well, besides the fact that it was Spring Break), but I scheduled a program every day I worked this week except Monday. What’s more, two of them were programs I was creating and had to figure out what I was going to do and say ahead of time. So, let’s just say I was a little stressed.

And it went great! The week is done! I can relax and enjoy Easter! And my month of April only has a few programs, so I can even focus my energies on moving.

But I want to talk about today’s program, because it was cool that I got to do it, and super that it actually worked.

It was an Every Child Ready to Read workshop. The workshop as prepared by the Every Child Ready to Read folks was called “Fun with Science and Math for Parents and Children.” Okay, I changed it. I called it “Fun with Math for Parents and Children.” (Because Math is more fun than Science! Don’t tell!) Of course, that meant I had to fill in with more math activities. But that was fun to do!

All of the Every Child Ready to Read workshops focus on five easy practices for parents to do with their children — Talking, Singing, Reading, Writing, and Playing. Not only are those activities good for learning pre-reading skills, they’re also good for learning early math concepts.

We did some counting together; the parents did some counting with the kids. I read them How Many Jelly Beans?, Quack and Count and Pattern Fish. (All of the books I read got checked out after the program, too.) I passed out some foam shapes and the parents and kids sorted and counted them. I also passed around a small tub of shapes, and they all guessed how many. Then we counted them together — there were 77. We counted how many letters in each child’s name and then lined up in order of the number of letters. We sang “Ten Little Beasties” and “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.” I showed them the awesome site that is BedtimeMath.org. And they finished up by making their own little counting book with a foam cover and paper inside. They could decorate it with shapes in patterns, or just with pretty shapes.

The comment that really made me happy was the mother who said she “learned a lot.” Another mother said it was so nice to have a program a little different from a storytime. Yet another said she thought the balance between activities and talking was just right. That one brought me a big sigh of relief! I had worried about whether the kids would be able to tolerate all I was going to say to the adults. But it worked! It really worked!

My plans are to do another Every Child Ready to Read workshop next month — this time “Fun with Letters for Parents and Children.” Then I’ll take a break until after the Summer Reading Program and do more next Fall.

But our first one was a big success! And I’m especially happy that a group of parents will think of the library when they think of their children getting ready for school and ready to learn to read. And ready to do Math!

Librarians Help!

Librarians Help – With Math!

Mathematical, Prime Factorization 2

Today I had my Colors and Codes program that I mentioned last week.

Now, I spent ten years of my life teaching college math, but doing math programs at the library is so much more fun!

Why? Well, the biggie is I don’t have to grade them, so it makes the whole thing much more light-hearted. I’m showing them things about math that I think are really cool, and they get to think about ways to do it themselves. And it’s all just for fun. At the library, we teach people things they want to know! If they don’t want to know them, they don’t need to come. It’s that simple!

Here’s what I did. I showed the kids my prime factorization sweater (wore it of course), and we worked out how it works. (That was fun!) I told them if colors can represent numbers, they can also represent letters. Just use 1 to 26 for A to Z. So you can write messages this way. I showed them a prime factorization code, then showed them other bases and how you can make codes with them. We wrapped it up by getting out sticky foam shapes and they could put a coded message or just a pretty pattern around a picture frame or on a bookmark or a door hanger.

The highlight for me, I think, was when a girl was working on coloring in the prime factorization chart on the hand-out. She was stuck on 24. I asked her what it equaled, and she said 12 x 2. So we looked at 12, and then the light went on and we talked about how you could do figure it out different ways, but you always got three 2s and one 3.

Now, I’m going to write some notes to myself while the program’s fresh in my mind. It went well; the kids had fun. But I want to do it again this summer, and hope it will go even better.

1. I’ll set the age level higher. I do think I lost a few kids this time. I think I’ll set it at 10 or 11 years old rather than 8. You want the kids to be fully comfortable with multiplying. Now that I think about it, when I did this program a few years ago at Herndon Fortnightly Library, I think the age limit was 10.

2. We’ll do some coloring on the prime factorization chart before I move on. This group did work out with me how it works. I didn’t want to get bogged down, but I think some coloring would help them understand it better.

3. I’ll have them figure out the numbers for their name in every code I go over. For example, my name, Sondy, in a base 10 code is 1915140425. (S is the 19th letter, O is the 15th, and so on.) In a prime factorization code, it’s 19 1 3 5 1 2 7 1 2 2 1 5 5 1. (19 x 1, 3 x 5 x 1, 2 x 7 x 1, 2 x 2 x 1, 5 x 5 x 1) In a Base 6 code, it’s 3123220441. In a Base 5 code, it’s 34 30 24 4 100. In Binary, it’s 10011 1111 1110 100 11001. Taking the time to do that would mean they’d get what I was having them do when they went to use the foam sticky pieces.

4. We’d do some coloring on the other charts before we moved to the foam shapes. Then I’d have them do their name with the colors they picked.

5. I’d show them exactly how I did my name on the bookmarks, one using colors and one using shapes.

Did I mention everyone did have a good time? But I think I’ll do a little more hands-on, using their names, before I move to the craft next time.

But it was a great trial run!

And don’t forget! Librarians help! We get to show kids how much FUN Math is! And we don’t even have to test them on it!

Colors and Codes

Mathematical, Prime Factorization 0

I just got a tweet that made me prouder than I’ve EVER been of my Prime Factorization Sweater, and that’s saying a lot.

The tweet was from @milesmac, Miles MacFarlane, a teacher, with the words, “#LeilaN students deciphered @Sonderbooks Prime Factorization Sweater – Now making own code #7Oaks”

Here’s the picture that accompanied it. Even by the backs of their heads, you can tell those are engaged kids!

Yes! That’s what it’s about! Mr. MacFarlane, you made my day!

And the timing is lovely. Next week, at my own City of Fairfax Regional Library, I’m doing a program I’m calling “Colors and Codes” where we’re going to do exactly that. I’ll wear the sweater (or maybe my prime factorization t-shirt and bring the sweater. And the scarf). I’ll show them how we can assign each letter of the alphabet a number from 1 to 26. We’ll start with a factorization code, but move on to things like Base 6 or Binary. And I’m going to have foam shapes for them to make crafts with codes in colors or shapes.

Yay! See, we don’t have to make Math fun! Math is fun!