Living Math Monday: Anno's Magic Seeds

We read a second book by Mitsumasa Anno, called Anno's Magic Seeds. It is another good living book, and I recommend it. Mr. Anno has written several more books, and we are going to check into them soon. I might have to just give them a blanket recommendation if they are all as good as the two we have read.

In Anno's Magic Seeds, a man named Jack is given two seeds. One seed, he is told, will feed him for a year. He is to plant the other seed, and he will grow a plant with two more seeds on it. This way, he can be self-sustaining.

He soon figures out that he can improve things if he saves both seeds one year, and plants two seeds. So he finds some other way to eat for a year, so that in the spring he can plant two seeds. The following year, he has three seeds to plant (after eating one of course.)

This book very simply explores the concept of planting and harvest, showing the geometric pattern of increase each year. The watercolor pictures are beautifully simple. Again, this appears to be a simple picture book, but the concepts are much deeper. It would be appropriate for any elementary-aged child.

Living Math Monday: The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat

We had a week off this week, as the older kids were at Grandma’s. Today I will review another book recommended on the Living Math site.

The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat by Theoni Pappas is a book of math activities that children will enjoy. Penrose is a cat that belongs to a mathematician. The mathematician is always working on lesson plans and mathematical drawings, and Penrose becomes interested in these papers. He dreams that the drawings and numbers come to life and talk to him. This part of the book seems awkward to me. My daughter was enchanted at first, she loves anything with talking animals, but it soon got old, and she didn’t end up finishing the book.

The book introduces higher math concepts, and each chapter is rather short, with activities at the end of each chapter. When needed, answers can be found in the back of the book. The activities are designed to be fun and to get kids thinking about the math concepts that are introduced. Sometimes I had to help my daughter to grasp the concept by paraphrasing what had happened before she knew how to get started on the activity. I didn’t mind having to re-explain the math concepts, but I think that part was a weakness of the book, where it could have been a strength.

We liked this book for the activities, but we found the part about Penrose the cat to be tiresome after a few chapters. We have found another book with some of the same concepts in a more fun, kid-friendly format. I will review that book next week.

Be sure to read my other Living Math posts.

Living Math Monday: One Grain of Rice

...I would have never considered a math notebook before beginning Living Math, but it makes perfect sense....

This is third in a series of posts where I am documenting our adventures in living math. The first post in the series is here.

We read a book called One Grain of Rice by Demi. A selfish raja in India stores up rice each year so that in time of famine there will be enough. When the famine comes, he won’t share and the people are starving.

A girl named Rani comes up with a plan. In return for a kindness, she asks the raja for one grain of rice that day, and a promise that he will double the amount of rice each day for 30 days. The raja agrees to the plan.

From there, we see how this simple plan gives the people their rice back. The selfish, foolish raja becomes wise and fair after being tricked out of all his rice.

Amazon rates this book for grades 1-4. It is easy to see that this is not correct. This book would be useful for all ages, maybe even up to college. The reading level is very easy, perhaps second grade level, but the concept is very deep.

I found a few links with ideas for using this book, especially for more advanced students.

One Grain of Rice Unit: Ideas for a unit study. This is an older website, and some of the image links are broken, but the text is all there. Look under Math Connections and Other Subject Connections to help make a complete unit study.

Excel Spreadsheet Activity This would be great for older students who are learning to use MS Excel.

Illuminations Another lesson plan. It uses some algebra, but I am beginning to see it is not too early to introduce these concepts. I would not expect my gradeschoolers to completely understand, but they can observe and get a taste of what is there.

The Solution Site There are some great plans on here, including an MS Excel sheet that is already set up for your student (great for younger ones who do not know how to use MS Excel.) Students get ½ cup rice to weigh and they learn to count a small amount to approximate how much rice would be in a 1 lb. bag of rice.

More Than One Grain of Rice Here is a PDF with some lesson plans. We printed out one of the pages to use for our notebook pages.

Kids Econ Lesson This is a lesson on economic scarcity using the book. Very simple and to the point. Good for younger students.

What we did: We made a notebook entry to show the grains of rice Rani was given each day. To calculate, we used the simple MS Excel spreadsheet. We measured out an ounce of rice, and counted the grains of rice. This was very hard, but my daughter did it with me helping her. On the spreadsheet, there is a way to figure out how much rice can be carried by a child, a pickup, a semi-trailer, and a train car. We decided to represent the number of pickups that would be needed to carry 1 billion grains of rice by using clip art pictures of a truck. We had to copy it 37 times on our paper.

We also used a picture from The Penny Project to show what one billion would look like in pennies. We pasted our items to notebook sheets.

This is the first entry in our new Mathematics Notebook. I would have never considered a math notebook before beginning Living Math, but it makes perfect sense.

Read my other Living Math posts.

Living Math Monday: Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar

Since we're starting to look at the concept of Living Math in our homeschool, I am going to start posting on Mondays about what we are learning. You can learn more about it here: Living Math

The first book we read together is called Anno’s Mysterious Multiplying Jar by Masaichiro and Mitsumasa Anno. At first, it seems like a simple picture book, with very little text on each page. You start with one island, which has two countries. In each country there are three mountains, and on each mountain are four kingdoms. On and on you go, until you get to nine boxes with ten jars in each box. Now that your mind is boggled, it asks you how many jars there are. Then goes on to explain what “10!” (ten factorial) means, and demonstrates what it looks like, at least as far as possible in a small book. (They are not able to show 10!, even though they use two double-sized pages!)

I am familiar with factorials, but I did not learn about them until I was in 11th grade. I know that many of my classmates never learned it because we learned it in Algebra III, which was an optional class back then. (Maybe it still is.) So, thinking of teaching math on a linear basis, we still have a long way to go (we’re doing simple division) before we “get to” this concept. But here it is explained in a picture book so that a child can understand it!

I think I am grasping the concept of “living math”(just a little bit) after reading this first book. My daughter enjoyed this one also.