Math Puzzle a Day    On Wed, Pat wrote  Has anyone been able to located a website that provides a Math game, problem, puzzle etc. a day and that is appropriate for 6th graders?
Kathy added:  Hi~   I use the following link to start my math class every day

 
We are planning a mock Iditarod to end our unit on the race. I saw this somewhere, but not sure where. We are also ending our physics unit and thought it would be a good tie-in. They will work in teams, build their sleds, be the dogs, etc. I just wondered if anyone already has all the rules and plans. The kids are looking forward to it. It will be a nice activity for the kids who remain in school for the
last day before spring break.

This all I have found so far. I think we are going to go with this plan since a big part of it is planned by the children.

I copied and pasted the parts that I thought were important for me. I pitched it to the kids today. They were excited. You could see their thoughts churning.

For the mock Iditarod, students divided into teams and built “dog sleds” from refrigerator boxes that they would pull during the 1-mile race over the school grounds. The theme for this year’s race was the Hawaiian Luau and the dog sleds were beautifully decorated with pineapples, Hawaiian dancers, and ocean scenes.

One student from each team was picked as the representative to attend the “Iditarod Trail Committee” meeting where the students made all of their own rules for their race. The lightest classmate from each team was picked to be the musher that would ride instead of pulling the sled.

Each team was also given a raw egg that must be carried in the sled the entire length of the race course. The real Iditarod Race was created to memorialize the famous serum run to Nome in 1925, when diphtheria antitoxin was delivered by dog sled to save sick children in that remote village. The
students decided an egg would act as the serum on their race. Because a cracked or broken egg meant disqualification, students suspended their “serum eggs” in tupperware containers filled with Jell-O or jars of peanut butter.
............
I must be crazy. But I am letting my top reading group brainstorm and plan how we could do a Mock Iditarod. These are most Acad. Gifted students. We are spending more time on this than I anticipated, but they are learning to brainstorm, compromise, find solutions, etc. Not exactly in our Standard
Course of Study or on the End of Grade Tests, but...... We have a rules committee, Checkpoint comm, route comm, prize comm, job officials comm, and a fate comm.
As a whole group we decided to use wagons as our musher sled, with 5 "dogs" attached with either a jump rope, or hooked together with hula hoops. As a group we decided to randomly draw names to put together our teams of 6 students.
Then each committee decided on their specific topic. We will have Fate cards that mushers draw at the checkpoints that will tell things like: snowstorm slows you down, wait an extra 20 seconds at this checkpoint. or "extra food as been left for your dogs, they get double treats of m&ms and
marshmallows"
We plan on doing this some day next week, and will have another class be our "officials, checkpoint people, veternarians, etc." Then the other class will race and we will be their officials.
Like I said, I am crazy.
I'll let you know if we actually survive. If anyone else is doing something like this, or has any suggestions, please let me know.
Therese,

 This is an 8 page pdf from Bob on Math Poetry   Click here

This is a graphing assignment on Math     Click here             Not sure from who!

The school has a math club for grades 3-5 that has been meeting for a while.The teacher who was doing it is no longer able to do so and another teacher and I will be doing the remaining weeks.
Last week we experimented to find the eleven different nets that can make a cube. It was amazing how well the students worked together and persevered to find the nets.Now we need something to fill up the next five meetings. Does anyone have any ideas or resources to help us?

Paula/RI
.............
Hi Paula, just popped the question to the internet ;-) and these look like they will carry you through quite well!

www.googolpower.com/content/crazy-4-math/club

A Have fun!
....................
How about having them conduct surveys, then graph and analyze the data? Each little team could come up with its own survey question. I think I have something on my site that can guide you through this activity. Look in the math file cabinet after you go to www.lauracandler.com . You could teach
them to use graphing software like MS Excel or Graph Master, or use a graph program on the internet. My kids always enjoy this. Tell them that they have to survey at least 50 people something so they get enough data.
Discuss how to get a random sample. You can also have them create double bar graphs or double line graphs if they have enough data, then print them and create a poster with conclusions they drew from the data. After they get their results, they could present them to the whole group. I think it would take at least 2 meetings to work on this project, with time in between to collect data. Some of the meeting time could be used to review range, mode, median, and mean.

Laura C
..........
Paula,
How about tangrams? I did these with some students I was tutoring and they loved them. Tesselations would also be fun. You could bring in Escher and his artwork then have the students use pattern blocks to make some repeating patterns of their own. The site below has many great activities with pattern blocks and other stuff you might find useful for your club. I like the idea of a math club for elementary students.

http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/Lessons/index.html
Leah H
.........
I use to do math club with a math specialist I will call her. We did graphing and probability, with a lot of success. Start with something simple like if I have three red marbles, 2 blue marbles, 1 yellow marble
which one do you think I will probably get the most of in 20 tries. Have them guess, then investigate and then graph what really happens and present it. This is often the top of my head, but i know the
lessons are on the internet. I think they are at read, write, think.
http://www.readwritethink.org/
Pat K
.........
Pentominoes are fun to work with. Here is a site to tell you about them and near the bottom of the page are some good activates. Well worth a look.

http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/resources/puzzles/pentoes/pentoint.htm

 This is a ppt on God and Mathematics

Mathematics  PPS   Click here