September 18, 2013

Besides being the monentous occasion of my son's 22nd birthday, today was the conclusion of the M&M's project, and I learned something really good.  We constructed bar graphs to document the class data from the M&M frequencies.  When the graphs were done, we cut the colored bars out, and taped them together to form a ring.  On a separate sheet of people, we traced the circle, and put a dot on the bar spaces so it formed the outline of a circle graph.  We found the center point of the circle by measuring the diameters, and connected the dots to form divisions in the circle.  After coloring in the sections with the appropriate matching colors, and then adding in the percentages, it became a pie chart to rival any that appear in an Excel program.

I also finished a couple sections of the homework today, and it consisted of a large amount of graphs and charts and how to read them.  It just took a minute so with the extra time, I started looking around for other educational blogs.  We signed up for the Math Blaster newsletter years ago for my youngest boy, and he's always liked it for games, worksheet, and fun.  http://www.mathblaster.com
I also like  http://www.math-lessons.ca/blog/ because it focuses on some of the math concepts that parents might need to brush up on while trying to help their intermediate school age children with their homework, like decimals and fractions. 
Another great site is Dr. Nicki's Guided Math, http://guidedmath.wordpress.com/category/elementary-math/.  It's detailed and comprehensive, and is so full of information.  She's put a lot of work into it.
Now, I think it's incredibly important for kids to have fun with math, and I also think it's important to have these fun activities available to parents as well as kids when they are at home, so I really like this site:http://www.learn-with-math-games.com/math-games-blog.html.  Another, similar site that  is really great at making activities easy to teach and has awesome step-by-step instructions is this one: http://kidsactivitiesblog.com/16500/math-for-kids.  It's really good.