You know how they say there are no stupid questions? Except there are and my not yet 6 year old just explained to me what makes a question a stupid one.

Here’s the story…

We were doing some schoolwork. I read him a story and then asked him a few questions about it. Why did I do that? Well, because the language development book I’m using told me to do just that. My son, who was pretty interested in the story, became distracted and uncooperative during our little Q&A. I asked him what was wrong and here’s the conversation we had:

Me: Honey, what’s wrong? You don’t seem to like this work?

Him: No, I don’t like it.

Me: Why?

Him: It’s because of the questions. They are boring and silly.

Me: Why is that?

Him: Because you already know the answers to all of them. So why are you asking me? 

Me: Why do you think I do this?

Him: You know the answer already, so you just want to test me if I know it. It is boring and silly.

Me (trying to hide my dismay): I see your point.

As serendipity would have it, I saw Beau Lotto and Amy O’Toole’s TED video later that same day. It is about science education, but I’m wondering (and this time I do NOT know the answer) if it is possible to teach math to young children through a similar play-based hands-on process without asking “stupid questions”.

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Welcome to adventurous math for the playground crowd! I am Moby Snoodles, and I love to hear from you at moby@moebiusnoodles.com

Moby’s mail

Bon “Math is not a four letter word” Crowder of, you guessed it, MathFour.com asks:

Hey Moby!
Can I post this picture on my site? The ant one? And to where should I link and attribute it if so?
Thanks!

Glad you asked! It reminded me I need to put a licence on the newsletters (see below) and the website. Yes, I am happy for you to use this or any other picture, with attribution to MoebiusNoodles.com

Dor Abrahamson of UC-Berkeley shares a lovely story about his family. Gabi is Dor’s wife and Neomi is their daughter. This story goes with our chapter on intrinsic multiplication! Do you have a Moebius Noodles story? Write me!

We were eating home-made Mexican food with my parents, who’re visiting here.
My dad asked why the brown paste is called ‘re-fried‘ beans.
Gabi said she’s not sure, but she guesses it’s cooked twice.
I said, “What if they cooked it yet again — they’d have to call it ‘re-re-fried‘ beans!”
Neomi said, “No, ‘re-re-fried beans’ would mean they cooked it four times.”
I asked, “How come?”
And Neomi said, “Because the ‘re’ at the beginning means you have to do the ‘re-fried’ over again, so that’s two times twice, so that’s four.”

I stammered something about sequences vs. nested structures, but that was where Neomi lost me and dug into the avocado.

The ant picture Bon liked is an example of a nested structure, too.

Book news

We’ve finished the first draft of illustrations and layouts for all chapters. In the coming weeks, we will put it all together as the finished book. It is a rather surprising amount of work, considering the writing and the illustrations are done! We need to figure out pages, introductions, covers and so on. At the same time, we will be discussing chapters with volunteer reviewers.

The cover is in the early stages of design. We know the elements we want on it, but not how they will come together – or their particulars! We want a big picture of kids, playing with complex math objects, and then some recognizable graphic elements that can be reused for other books in the Moebius Noodles series. Your ideas are very welcome. Here is an early draft.

Sharing

You are welcome to share the contents of this newsletter online or in print. You can also remix and tweak anything here as you wish, as long as you share your creations on the same terms. Please credit MoebiusNoodles.com

More formally, we distribute all Moebius Noodles content under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license: CC BY-NC-SA

Talk to you again on October 30th!

Moby Snoodles, aka Dr. Maria Droujkova