Sarah W, age 6, comes from CA to work with Don for 5 days- Day 5

 

Day 5: Sunday 3 July 2011

  

1. We started working on the growth of the Nautilus shell. But Sarah didn't know about ratios. We talked about comparing our ages, if Don was 80 and if Sarah was 8. Sarah would be 72 years younger than Don or Don would be 72 years older than Sarah-- comparing by subtraction. OR we could compare our ages by division or ratio; so Don is 80/8 or 10 times as old at Sarah, or Sarah is 8/80 or 1/10 as old as Don.

2.  Using the volume relationship pieces at the sink,  Sarah found that 3 cones filled the

         cylinder  and 3  pyramids filled the cube.

 

 

 

 

Don then asked Sarah to take off the table all those with one attribute, like all the red people, and keep all the others in the same rows as before. Don had Sarah write the number of people left in each row, obtaining the following:


                                                        1   3   3   1                               8      

 

                                                        1   4   6   4   1                        16


Don failed to scan Sarah’s last page, but she continued until we ended with something like this

  

  1. 4.To end the day, and her 5 sessions, we made a video which Sarah named and is the star, called        “It’s Raining Cookies”

Thanks to Becky, former student of Don’s 30 years ago, for bringing her delightful daughter Sarah, to work with him during the Summer of 2011!!!

  1. 3.Using "People Pieces" Sarah found the first 5 rows of Pascal's triangle, then finding PATTERNS in the numbers she was able to predict the next 3 rows!  


   Don started by having Sarah sort the people (16 pieces) into two groups, with the same number in each: she found they differ by color- 8 red, 8 blue; by height- 8 tall, 8 short; by gender- 8 girls, 8 boys; and by body thickness- 8 thin, 8 heavy.


Don then asked her to pick out one person; she chose the thin, girl, short, and blue person. Don put that piece at the top. Sarah was then asked to find all the people who were different in only ONE way from the one she chose and then Don put these in a row under the top one. Then in the next row would go all the people that were 2 ways different than the top one...and so on. Then we put the number of people in a row across the 1/2” graph paper  1   4    6   4   1  with the total on the right     16.

 

 

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