Valentine Mathematical Symmetry

11 February 2012

Today we made our Valentine's card. It was a fun and super messy but easy to clean up. I started out with having Ra help me figure out if we had enough paper doilies for how many cards we wanted to make. We wrote a list of all the cousins and friends and grandparents we would be making cards for. We agreed that each cousin would only get one card from all four of the kids, the friends would get one card as well. The grandparents however would get one card from each of the kids that could make them on their own, (leaving Em out of the count). The initial count left us with 32 cousins, 6 friends, and 8 grandparents. So our equation looks something like this (32 + 6) + (8 x 3) = 62 . SIXTY TWO! Boy I sure am glad we aren't adding another 60 cards to that with school classes for Ra and El!

I showed Ra the packages of doilies. I had one package of red, one of white and one of pink. There were 16 doilies per package. I asked her to figure out how many doilies we had to make cards with. She added 16 + 16 + 16 and I explained that this was the same thing as 16 x 3. I then asked her if we had enough doilies to use one for every card. She said no, that 48 < 62. I then had her figure out how many more doilies we would need to be able to have one for each card. With an answer of 14 I asked her how many more packages we would need. She answered with one package. We went to the store to get the last needed package.

Finally beginning, we used construction paper, scissors, glue and the doilies to make the cards. I showed the kids how to make a heart by folding the paper in half and cutting half a heart shape around the fold. I used this as an opportunity to explain symmetry. We had fun coming up with other shapes and patterns to cut out using symmetry.  We made hearts, diamonds, rectangles, accordion people, and flowers just to name a few.

We continued the observation of symmetrical objects into dinner time and I plan on continuing to point it out whenever we see it throughout the year.    

Tonight we read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett again. And hey, I even got some reading in of Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter.