Nucleus Learning – Page 50 – The heart of creative education.

March 31, 2021March 31, 2021

How to help young children learn math – Adding Finger Game

I am working on an adding game for very young kids (2 to 4 year olds). It is based on counting on fingers. Children learn how to add quickly if they start to recognize their hand and finger positions. For instance, children that are good at adding don’t need to count if they see three fingers on one hand, they just know it’s three. Similarly, it is beneficial for a budding child’s faster math skills, for him or her to knows that a full hand of five fingers and the other hand with three is eight, without counting. This game is designed such that the child gets a lot of practice with associating finger positions with the appropriate numbers.

March 31, 2021March 31, 2021

Draw a Person Test (DAP) – A great way to tell a child’s intelligence

Recently I went to the doctor for my son’s yearly check-up. Our doctor is fantastic, and I am so lucky that I was fortunate enough to get him. Everytime we go, I learn something very interesting, this time was no exception.

The Doctor started asking standard medical questions: Was Jakub seriously ill this past year? Any ear infections? etc. Then he turned to his mental, social and physical development. And he asked me:

“Does Jakub know how to draw a person?”

March 30, 2021March 30, 2021

Hexa-Trex Puzzle 18

March 30, 2021March 31, 2021

Why is play important?

A few years back I took a course on Expertise: how experts think, how they become experts, and what it means to be an expert. That course had a huge impact on my thinking. The huge revelation was that “Deliberate Practice” is the only thing that leads people to become experts in any field (Ericsson, 2006). So as the old saying says: “Practice makes perfect”.

But this practice needs to be “deliberate” which means several things, among them, there needs to be some sort of feedback mechanism (possibly a coach or a feedback of a musical instrument, or even a personal reflection). I always thought that practice is very important, but I never realized that this was really everything. There is no magic pill, no inherent talents, it’s pure practice – 10 000 hours of DELIBERATE practice.

March 30, 2021

Math Teacher’s Bag-of-Tricks: How to make my class more entertaining?

Math can sometimes seem like a very dry subject… you can just have a pencil and paper to do it, and in order to become good at it, you need to do problem after problem: “Practice Makes Perfect” as they say. But as a math teacher, it is nice to have a bag of “math tricks” up your sleeve to show the actual beauty and interesting side of math.

March 30, 2021March 30, 2021

The Sword of Knowledge: A Cute Puzzle – Great for Kids!

The dragon of ignorance has three heads and three tails. However, you can slay it with the sword of knowledge by cutting off all its heads and tails. With one swipe of the sword you can cut off one head, two heads, one tail, or two tails.

But . . .

When you cut off one head, a new one grows in its place.

When you cut off one tail, two new tails replace it.

When you cut off two tails, one new head grows.

When you chop off two heads, nothing grows.

Help the world by slaying the dragon of ignorance.

March 30, 2021March 30, 2021

The “Three Doors, One Prize” Probability Puzzle

In the recent movie: “21” a probability puzzle is presented:

A quiz show contestant is lead to a room with three doors. Behind one of them there’s an expensive sports car; behind the other two there’s a goat. The candidate chooses one of the doors. But it is not opened; the host (who knows the location of the sports car) opens one of the other doors instead and shows a goat. The rules of the game, which are known to all participants, require the host to do this irrespective of the candidate’s initial choice. The candidate is now asked if he wants to stick with the door he chose originally or if he prefers to switch to the other remaining closed door. His goal is the sports car, of course!

The question now is:

* Is the candidate better off if he sticks with his original choice, * are his chances better if he switches, or * does it not matter whether he switches or not?

March 30, 2021March 30, 2021

Interesting Puzzle- how does this work?

1. Take an eight by eight grid (with 64 squares).
2. Fill it randomly with digits 1 through 8.
3. Now start at any number on the left most column.
4. Move that many spaces down your grid (going up to the top of the next column if you run out of space).
5. Whatever number you land on, take that many steps down the grid, moving to the top of the next column if you run out of space, and continue.
6. Continue this procedure, until you run out of room on the whole grid.
7. Mark the last spot you landed on.
8. Start again with a new number on the left most column of your grid. Redo the whole procedure.
9. Try again, starting with yet another number on the left most column of the grid. And again. And again.
10. What happened?

March 29, 2021

Building houses of straw, sticks, and bricks – The Three Little Pigs lesson plan

Keeping with the theme of building, my last workshop for the younger elementary students was about building structures of different materials. I first read the kids the classic tale of the Three Little Pigs. This is an amazing little story that can be used as a starting point for a Scientific Method / Building Lesson Plan.

After that we discussed the different materials that were used to build the three houses. I asked the kids to make a hypothesis whether the story is correct. Here are some questions we discussed:

Which house is really the best one? Why do you think so?
What is the manipulated variable in this story? What is the responding variable? What about the controlled variables?
How could we test out the hypothesis? How many times would we have to do the experiment to feel satisfied that the story is correct or incorrect?

Continue reading “Building houses of straw, sticks, and bricks – The Three Little Pigs lesson plan”

March 29, 2021March 29, 2021

Teaching Hydraulics and Pneumatics Unit to Children

Hydraulics and Pneumatics are great topics to teach children. First of all both words sound very impressive and when the children learn these words they will sound very important and knowledgeable if they use them. Also, hydraulics and pneumatics are used in many machines and in many everyday applications, therefore it is easy to show the importance of understanding these topics. One can easily show and explain the difference between hydraulics and pneumatics – a great “Compare and Contrast” analysis. Thirdly, there are many fun and impressive experiments that can be done with hydraulics and pneumatics in a very inexpensive way, with very accessible materials. And finally, since hydraulics and pneumatics is so useful, there can be multiple projects that children can actually build themselves. Thus weaker students and stronger science students can both do projects, yet with differing complexity. Here are some of the techniques I use in order to teach hydraulics and pneumatics to children: