Monday, December 26, 2005

Monday: Mathematical Madness!

Quick! What is 5+2x7-4÷9+4= ? O.K. How about 7x8+4÷10x7-2÷8= ? Got it?
That might have seemed relatively easy, but try it with someone rattling them off to you out loud, and see if you can keep up. That was just one of the fun, yet educational things we did today, the Mathematics Day in our Educational week. It started off with a rousing game of "Quinto". (For anyone who is not familiar with the game, it is somewhat like "Scrabble", except that instead of letters, you have numbers, and instead of making words, you are making sums.) We teamed up in pairs, John & Christianna, Charity & Josiah, Grace & Joshua, and Dad and Faith Ann. (Mom was busy preparing for the next game.) All the sums created had to be a multiple of 8. The largest sum was made by the team of Grace & Joshua, and was a whopping 104! (yes, it is a multiple of 8, you do the math:-) They ended up being the game winners, but everyone had a lot of fun, and we are now all great at multiples of 8!

Next, we played a quick game of Dice Math. Mom taped numbers to the sides of Faith's juggling squares to create extra large Dice. Then as we sat in a circle, she tossed them onto the floor, calling out either, "Addition, Subtraction, or Multiplication" Whoever said the answer first, took a turn tossing the dice. A quick simple game to enhance our speedy mathematic skills.

Finally, we played the quick thinking game first mentioned, with each of us taking a turn to make a list of numbers and read them off to each other. John came up with quite a doozy! Here it is for your enjoyment. :-) 2+7x3+3x3÷2+20-17+2x2÷4÷5x7-2= ?

Below are some pictures of us playing Quinto.

Quinto! We don't play with Roman Numerals though. But I think that would be fun! Posted by Picasa

Here we all are around the game board. John obviously is thinking very hard. :-) Posted by Picasa

The Board. This is pretty near the end of the game.  Posted by Picasa