Author: miriamw081

Today was a great day for the Math-a’licious Discovery Term! We started off the day playing Frisbee Golf at SAS, a game that incorporates parabolas and different curves in the trajectory that the Frisbee travels. But above all: the game was really fun! We returned to the upper school to watch a video on different ways math has been woven into art over the centuries, in preparation for our trip to the North Carolina Museum of Art. After the video, we went to the NCMA for a tour and to explore the grounds. On each piece of art in the tour, we paused to discuss different the different ways that math fit into the paintings. A common theme among the paintings is the use of parallel lines to establish perspective, and to give depth to different scenes. After our tour, we ate lunch in front of the museum. Following our lunch, we took a walk on the scenic trails around the Museum, and finally returned back to CA. Upon our return, we played a short game of touch football on the Quad, and finished out our day by planning for our presentation on Friday.

Edit: The museum was really picky about pictures so here’s a representation of what it looked like

(Made in Powerpoint)

We continued our math adventures with another day at Leesville Road Elementary School. We, once again, started the day off with by walking a few laps around the track and then left for Leesville. Once at Leesville, we did some simple math activities that included logic and addition with the first graders. After that, we continued to tutor the fourth graders. Lunch was, once again, at Crabtree Valley Mall. We finished off the day with some group strategy games.

The members of Math-a-licious started off Discovery Term by traveling to the Leesville Elementary School in Raleigh to tutor fourth graders–budding math students. Upon arriving at the school, we introduced ourselves to a class of fourth graders and got to work. Each of the Cary Academy students worked with one or two of the Leesville students, helping them with math concepts and giving them example problems for practice. The topics ranged from operations with fractions and decimals to word problems with area and perimeter. For us Upper School students, for years we have been doing these kinds of problems every day in our math classes. However, teaching these topics to others was a bit of a challenge. It has been a long time since many of us have had to explain fundamental fraction concepts to someone else. Trying to think of ways to explain concepts that now come as natural to us tested our own conceptual understanding of basic math. However, the first day of tutoring was a great success, and I believe the children at the school had a better understanding of math concepts afterward. To finish our day, we ate lunch at the Crabtree Valley Mall food court, walked around the mall a bit, and returned to school for some board games. Day One was a great success.