Symmetry is All Around Me

It’s amazing how much in our world is symmetrical. Once you start looking, you find symmetry (both occurring naturally and man-made) everywhere!

Walking around saying “see” and “look at this” didn’t really seem like the best way to explain symmetry so I turned to Loreen Leedy for help. Her book Seeing Symmetry is wildly fun.

The graphics are bold and the explanation ever so helpful. It has TONS of examples of symmetry (whales, beetles, airplanes, the human body, certain letters of the alphabet, etc.).

The book explained vertical and horizontal lines of symmetry and even demonstrated rotational symmetry (think bicycle wheel or helicopter blade).

After reading, I handed my son his camera (our half broken old one) and told him to find at least a dozen symmetrical things and take pictures of them. He didn’t even have to leave his seat at the kitchen table to find the first one – the sunglasses perched on my head!

Soon, he was off snapping pictures everywhere in the house (it was threatening rain outside so our symmetry hunt was confined to indoors).

He was ecstatic to find an example of rotational symmetry in his bedroom: his ceiling fan!

With his pictures taken, I quick loaded them onto my computer and printed nine wallet size. Then I cut them out and handed them to him with a red colored pencil and a ruler. It was time to draw each item’s line of symmetry!

Finding Friends on the Map [Cardinal Directions]

When we’re in the car, my son thinks going straight means we’re going north. Um … not quite. To help him understand cardinal directions, I decided he should use a compass and practice locating things on a map.

We don’t have a compass, so he made one! We followed the same directions that are posted here. 

All you need is a cork, shallow dish/bowl, needle, water, and a magnet. This was surprisingly easy and fun, too!

My son kept moving the cork to watch the needle spin right back and point north again. Never having worked with a compass before, he was curious to see that it always pointed north.

He thought that it would point in whatever direction you were heading. I explained how once you knew which way was north, you could figure out the rest of the directions.

After our compass was made, I gave him a little activity I’d worked up to practice directions. Before he started, though, I pointed out two things on the makeshift map I’d made: the compass rose and the map scale.

Download a PDF of this map and directions to find friends' locations here.

Next, he read directions and followed them to find friends on the map (an example is below), either beginning at the start or using the clue in the first direction to determine the starting point.

After all eight friends were located, he picked the place he’d want to go and wrote the directions to it.

Of course, my son picked the ice cream shop (like father, like son)!

DIY Palm Pipes

The drinking straw flute was such a success, I was anxious for my son to make another instrument. When I found instructions to make palm pipes out of PVC, I knew my son would be psyched.

We started with one 5-foot length of ½-inch cold water PVC pipe (price: less than $2). My husband cut it into the following lengths:

23.6 cm (F)

21.0 cm (G)

18.75 cm (A)

17.5 cm (B flat)

15.8 cm (C)

14 cm (D)

12.5 cm (E)

11.8 cm (F)

With some fine-grit sandpaper, we smoothed the edges a bit.

When my son came home from school, we read a whimsical book by Steven Kellogg. His account of the Pied Piper’s journey and magical flute was wonderful with playful illustrations that added to our enjoyment of the story.

Now it was time to make some beautiful music of our own. When my son saw the lengths of pipe I put on the table, I could see the wheels in his brain turning. He thought we should tap them together to make music. I explained that these were pipes. When he lined them up longest to shortest, he figured we were just making another pan pipe to blow into. All good conclusions … but wrong.

Before I revealed how to play these pipes, we ran a few pieces of painters tape around each and used different colored permanent markers to add stripes in different colors.

Then I told him to place letter stickers on each and told him the order of the letters. These letters were the music notes each pipe would play.

With our pipes colored and labeled, there was nothing left to do but play them. That’s when I told my son to pick a pipe and tap one end of it against the palm of his hand. WHOA! The sound plays a music note, with each pipe being tuned according to their lengths.

“Do  Re  Mi  Fa  Sol  La  Ti  Do” he played. To keep our pipes from rolling all over the table, I placed a kitchen towel underneath them. Then he tried his hand (literally) at “My Country Tis of Thee” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” using the notes included with the instructions I used.

This was a riot!! Our toddler had fun with them. My husband had fun with them (tapping them in syncopated rhythm against his thighs). And that night before reading with my son, I had fun with them too, using them to make sound effects to accompany an impromptu poem about a leaky faucet, light and heavy rain, etc. These are a blast!!

Yard Sale Board Game [Counting Money]

It’s yard sale season, which is a wonderful time to work on counting money! I drummed up a game to play with my son that works on the following:

1. Spending your money wisely (e.g. if you have $0.30, you can buy one thing for $0.30 or three things for $0.10).
2. Saving your money to buy bigger ticket items.
3. Exchanging money (e.g. ten dimes can be exchanged for $1.00).
4. Making change (e.g. you buy something that costs $0.75 and pay with a one dollar bill; how much change do you get back?).

What you need to play:

Poker chips (each player uses a different color as gamepieces)

The game board and money cards (download a PDF here)

Funny money in $1.00, $5.00, and $10.00 increments (you can download some here)

Lots of U.S. coins

Yard sale pricing stickers

Prep:

Once you’ve taped the game board together and cut apart the money cards, stick one yard sale pricing sticker on each item on the board (use only a few $5 and $10 stickers).

Objective:

Buy as many items as you can. The player with the most items purchased (i.e. poker chips on the board) when the entire board is filled is the winner.

Rules:

Play alternates between players. We played with two players, but I think you can play with as many as four. Each player gets $1.00 in funny money to start. Then, they draw from the pile of cards.

Whatever amount of money on the card is given to the player and he/she can purchase as many items as they’d like until they are out of money. A gamepiece (i.e. poker chip) is placed on all of the items that are purchased.

A purchase should be made during each turn, unless the player does not have enough money to buy any of the remaining items on the board, or they get the “Oh No” card. In which case, a gamepiece is removed and play resumes with the next player drawing a card from the draw pile.

Before we played, we read a great Mercer Mayer book. This got my son in the spirit of yard saling!

Then we both put on our game faces and raided my husband’s bowl of pocket change. It was a buying frenzy at first, but as the low-ticket items were purchased, the pace slowed. Now, we forced to “save” our money to see who would get the remaining few $5 and $10 items. This was a lot of fun and although it was intended just to work on counting money, there were loads of other lessons built right in.

I think we’re both in the mood to bargain hunt at next weekend’s yard sales now!


CREDIT: I downloaded the currency clip art from TeacherFiles.com.

Proofreading Police

My son’s first-grade teacher is working hard to help the students, my son included, understand the writing process and the importance of proofreading. To reinforce her efforts, I created a fun activity to give my son some practice editing.

Having spent much of my professional career as a writer and editor, this activity is close to my heart.

To start, we read a book from the Grammar Tales series. Francine Fribble, Proofreading Policewoman by Justin Martin was the perfect book to illustrate just how important proofreading is.

The story follows Francine on her beat as she heads through town correcting bad grammar (improper or forgotten capitalization, bad spelling, and lack of apostrophes and other punctuation). My son loved it!

When he was done, I told him it was time for him to join the proofreading police squad. He was excited!

I gave him four cases to review. Each profiled one kid (Too Busy Tina, Careless Kyle, Unsure Ursula, and Forgetful Frank). Download them here.

                                      

It was up to him to review their crimes against grammar and help correct the errors (i.e. to proofread)!

He did a wonderful job (this mama-writer was SO proud!), missing a few of the edits and struggling a bit with the use of the apostrophe, but was eager to get through all the “evidence.”