April Round Up

Topic of the Month was - History of Maths



We watched - The Story of Maths with Marcus du Sautoy, an OU series of programmes, and was a bit pricey but absolutely brilliant.

Horizon; Alan and Marcus go forth and multiply - Alan Davis and Marcus du Sautoy, again, absolutely brill, in fact I blogged on it separately early in April (http://mamacrow.blogspot.com/2009/04/best-maths-programme-in-world.html)

The Maths Channel - a BBC for schools series. 10 minutes a pop, aimed at 10year olds I think, actually found it to be quite good and we all enjoyed it.

We read - Murderous Maths books from the library:
Trigonometry, Fiendish Angletron
Desperate Measures: Length, Area and Volume
The Essential Arithmetricks
The Perfect Sausage and other fundamental problems
The Algebra Phantom X
All Kjartan Poskitt, all Scholastic Children's books. Roo in particular could often be found with his nose in one of these.

Marvellous Maths Multiplication, David L Stienecker, Cherry Tree Books (library)

Think of number - Johnny Ball, DK (library)

Einstien, the girl who hated maths (poems), John Agard & Satoshi Kitamwa, Hodder Children's Books (library)

The Maths Gene - Keith Devlin, Phoenix - really good

The little book of maths activities - Sally Featherstone, A&C Black Publishers. This series of books is aimed at schools and nurseries, but I actually found thing helpful, due to the sheer amount of ideas - lots I hadn't thought of or already come across - and the way they were grouped together. For what it was, quite good.

Infinite Assent - David Berlinski, Phoenix, kindly lent by my maths teacher brother-in-law Uncle J. AWFUL, terribly written, stuffed full of sweeping, unsubstantiated value judgements - I threw it (nearly out the window) after two pages. Papacrow lasted half a chapter. Not even worth it for chronology - you can get a far more comprehensive and infinitely better sited one free on Wikipedia.

We played - chess, tons of different board games, marvel superheros table top roll playing (involved dice rolls, number representation of concepts, and lots of mental arithmetic) lots of maths activities, oodles of black gammon, lots of other dice strategy games, some card games too.

We went - nowhere I'm afraid - only maths related place I could whistle up was the maths gallery in the Science Museum in London, and what with train ticket cost and me feeling pants, we didn't go. We went plenty of other places later on in the month though!

We made connections to - lots of stuff we've already played (like chess etc) and things we've already read about (babylonians have a 60 base number system for example - hense our 60 based time measuring system.)

Loose ends to tie up - none I can think of... We powered through what maths works books we had, and I need to pick up some more some time.

This month's howling disaster - weather wasn't always good, and I felt terrible for much of it. We survived though!

Non topic stuff - Gosh, too numerous to mention... Lots of karate, Saurus and Wig are in the demo squad and have performed at demos, Saurus has a had a game and a tournament with his new football club. Been out and about to a park with a large water fowl pond and big collection of trees a lot, also lots of trips - lego shop, bluebell walk etc. Also been spending lots of time on Granddad's allotment. Been reading alot as ever, Primevil (Roo) and Teen Titans (Wig).

Saurus - moods - up and down a bit, but he's quicker to turn it around, and really try and keep his attitude good instead of answering back and getting bolshy. Got a very jazzy new pair of footy boots bought for him which he's been carrying around the house with him! Aw!

Roo - GOT HIS ORCHID TO FLOWER AGAIN!!!! Naturally the small cheep supermarket one, not the expensive one from the proper orchid shop that has DIED. Patchy temper and motivation - oh well. Has a requested a poo chart, and will be getting extra pocket money for successfully ticking, so we'll see how that helps... Been drawing bugs etc a lot.

Wig - Lots of maths, reading, started to write words unaided (without tracing), still explosive temper, but has downgraded from shouting and stamping to 'bleeeh' and rolling eyes. Step at a time eh! Practicing karate kata's alot, and has been to lots of advanced training sessions.

Fluff - Been a bit brighter this month,

Petal - Can kiss properly all of a sudden! Has acquired lots of new words, including Granddad, Ta, Please, more of the boy's names, Choc choc. Building lots by herself. Likes to get out big boy books and sit reading them seriously on the sofa :) Walking really well, can walk pretty far now, if not terribly fast.

I'd like to do ... in May - sort out tennis, swimming, and horseriding. We are also DEFINITELY going to crack out the guitar and dvd this month, honestly! Yes I have said this all before! We're doing Astronomy, and hope to go to Greenwich observatory and planetarium. There's also a karate seminar in London with Bill Superfoot Wallace (a top top top martial artist) coming up! Excitement!