Sunday, September 30, 2012

Thinking in Threes

My seven year old daughter and I are really quite a team.  One of us will share an idea or an observation and all of a sudden the other of us will be inspired into action.  For example, she found a triangle in this clover last week and I immediately knew what we could do with it.



And, although she sometimes eschews direct participation in projects I think up, my kid is generally always around as I'm making something.  In this particular case, I chatted with her about what I was doing while I glued and pasted, and she made a lot of observations, which is good enough for me.

Isn't it cool?!?






















It's a (dried) clover Sierpinski triangle!  We picked clovers, flattened and dried them in a sketchbook, and finally found some time (and a glue stick) to paste them down.  I don't know about my kid, but I am really enjoying all the different types of Sierpinksi triangles we've made over the last few weeks: out of candies, with our straight edge and ruler, with our colored pencils, with money, and now this!

It's fun to find math, wherever we go and it's even more fun to make math out of the things we find. 

2 comments:

  1. This is what I'm going to try doing next time - I'll just start working on a project that's of interest to me and talk my way through it. I noticed a few times in the past that my son would usually be more eager to join in (or put his spin on) such projects as opposed to the times when I ask for his participation. Your post helped me put two and two together :) Love how you take time to focus on the new concepts and explore them using different mediums!

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  2. Hey, if it works for you, fabulous! I think we have similar kids -- I loved all the stuff you did with your son's garbage interests. That's one of my other approaches -- follow her interests. We just spent the last two or three weeks in the Middle Ages and it's been so much fun.

    In terms of exploring the Sierpinski triangle fractals in so many different ways, it just sort of happened that way, but it sure has been fun!

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Thanks for reading. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments!

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