After our binary adding counting board, we made a set of Napier’s more famous calculating device, a set of Napier’s bones. Good times tables practice! #tmwyk

My son was making binary numbers in Lego, so we did a bit of binary adding using a counting board method designed by Napier that’s familiar to him as it’s very like #explodingdots. We started with him setting out some numbers - 8, 12, 3, 33, 76 and 186.

Continued in thread 🧵 #tmwyk

“I’ve noticed if a corner doesn’t have white on it, it has yellow.”

With a bit prompting, he made a similar observation about the other colour pairs. #tmwyk

@KarenCampe @jennalaib cue the next #tmwyk discussion

New Blog Post:
Eight Cupcakes #tmwyk

How can we arrange 8 cupcakes in a pan that has space for 12? Chatting with my 7yo.

#MTBOS #ITeachMath

https://jennalaib.wordpress.com/2023/08/27/eight-cupcakes-tmwyk/

Ah, I’ve infected the boy with Game of Life. He’s enjoying following the patterns. #tmwyk

My son made this and challenged me to predict how it rolls, then showed me. He said it rolls this way because the small wheel moves round more quickly than the big one. We had a discussion about the rigid bar between the two. #tmwyk

@peterrowlett
Nice pics and a great post! I'd say this definitely deserves a #tmwyk

If you're a parent looking to explore something mathematical with your children over the summer break, you could do worse than this: https://aperiodical.com/2023/08/daily-lego-maths-prompts-every-day-in-august/

(Or just follow @alisonkiddle as the post is just an introduction to something they're doing throughout August)

#tmwyk #maths

@alisonkiddle No small mathematicians in my life this week (I can usually borrow some of my friends' kids 😉 but my own are 21 & 24)

I notice that your Legos are in square shapes... and I'll leave the rest of the Qs to others about formulas.

I wonder how many raised bumps are in each shape you've constructed, and how many red vs. yellow bricks are in each shape, and how many total bricks we need to make 5 or 10 shapes in this pattern.

#NoticeWonder #ClassroomMath #TMWYK (talking math with your kids)

My son brought home a year’s worth of school books. I was amused to spot this. Not a great justification, son! #tmwyk

New Blog Post:
55 Points at the Arcade #tmwyk
https://jennalaib.wordpress.com/2023/07/16/55-points-at-the-arcade-tmwyk/

My daughter S had 55 points to spend at the prize counter. Prizes came in denominations of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. What could she get?

#MTBoS #ITeachMath

I viciously and deliberately nerdsniped the 9yo yesterday -- he had built a polygon-drawing routine in Scratch so (naturally) I asked what would happen if you didn't limit it to whole numbers of sides.

Today he's made this: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/874096451/ #tmwyk

Every year, my son, my father, and I go to the local Circus World Museum to take a little step back in time and take in some circus history. My son and I really enjoy looking and finding the crazy absurd posters/photos.
With the lady weightlifting with her mouth, his first comment was, "maybe those numbers are ounces?!?" #tmwyk #unitchat #MTBoS

I see people are doing new #introductions. Hi! I’m Peter. I teach maths at university in the UK. I teach #modelling, #gametheory, #history, #programming. #MTBoS #ITeachMath

I do a #podcast - chats about maths - Mathematical Objects, with @stecks and guests. Here’s our Hannah Fry episode: https://aperiodical.com/2022/04/mathematical-objects-superegg-with-hannah-fry/

I’m part of a maths magazine / #blog called @aperiodical. We post breaking news updates at @mathnews.

My #research is in university maths teaching practice. Interests, publications, etc. here: https://peterrowlett.net/research

I like to post about my mathematical play with my son using #tmwyk - talking maths with your kids.

There’s more, but I’ll stop there!

I saw this question, which was apparently posed to year 3. The consensus in the replies is that this is way too hard for year 3, which I agree with. Still, I was interested in what my son, who’s in year 3, would do with it. A #tmwyk thread!

My son says he did two maths tests this week. He said he preferred the one that was “maths questions”, like “Joe has 56p but spends 43p…”, to the one that was “number sentences”, like “6 x 7”. #tmwyk #mtbos

I explained to add the two numbers above and treat blanks as zero. At this point he said “ah, there’s always going to be 1s on the outside!” #tmwyk

Part of his maths homework. He said “wait, how come the lines are the same length when they’re measuring different totals?” I said they’d be stuck to cylinders of different widths and we talked about how length, area and volume are measuring different dimensions. #tmwyk

Still, that’s not obvious, right? A few weeks ago a line was a length, now a line is a volume. Part of how we show kids maths in a way that seems like arbitrary magic, maybe?

In which I was following strict instructions from my son to make sixteenths by continued halving. #tmwyk