Review of Small Numbers

We had a great group for learning about Small Numbers before Thanksgiving. We started off outside on chalk drawn number lines. We played with positive and negative numbers with our feet on the number line. We stretched and hopped our way to number combinations in a twister sort of fashion. Put your left foot on -4, put your right foot on 0, now in one big hop put your left foot on -1 and your right foot on +3. You get the idea.

Then we talked about ways to write numbers. I wrote a collection of numbers on the driveway and the kids told me when I was writing "new" numbers. They caught me at 10². Yep I wrote the number 100 in a silly way they told me once I explained the number. We kept going and we discussed 3x10⁴ and they began to see the simplicity of exponential notation.

With those two concepts, we can proceed to Small Numbers. We broke the driveway into sections 10 meters long. Each child or team then divided their section up 10 pieces. I had a little worksheet to go along with this activity where they wrote down how many deci-driveways they made (10¹) and how much of their total driveway section was in each deci-driveway (10^-1). Then we took one deci-driveway and broke it onto 10 pieces - centi-driveways. Do you see how I introduced measurement, ratios, and SI unit prefixes? We went one step further to milli-driveways and that was hard enough to mark in thick sidewalk chalk.



At this point we stepped inside to the microscope, Powers of Ten movie clip, and a number ordering activity. We have a microscope with a magnification of up to 400x and lots of prepared slides. I also made available a scale bar (aka clear ruler with mm markings) so they could really see how big the microscope made things look. Those mm markings are huge through the objective lense! Powers of Ten is a famous (in physics circles) film which takes a couple picnicking by the lake in Chicago and changes the field of view by a power of ten every 4 seconds or so. The distance covered go larger than galaxies and smaller than the nucleus of an atom. This film showed the kids things they can't see in everyday normal life. The last activity was to arrange a set of cards with the numbers in order. There were 5 sets and the numbers got progressively more challenging to order because they got smaller and were written in exponential notation (which is larger 3x10^-2 or 3x10^-3?).

Review of Big Numbers, Big World

A smaller group joined us for Big Numbers, Big World than for the inaugural Bubble Fun. Is it because the topic was math? Anyway, we were mostly indoors this time due to the wet ground. We used the homemade Montessori bead materials to review small numbers, the decimal system, and powers of ten.



We then moved on to the largest numbers participants knew. We wrote them down, counted the zeroes, and named the numbers. Exponential notation was introduced here - the exponent on the ten is just the number of zeroes! There were signs up around the room, one for each family of big numbers (millions, quadrillions, etc). On the signs were a number, how many zeroes it has, the number written in exponential notation, and the number family it belongs to. The bottom of the sign then gave at least four (4) "things" which were that large. Examples:

1
no zeroes
units
10**0 (this is the exponential notation)
1 moon and 1 sun above us
5 fingers on most human hands
You are probably wearing one pair of underwear!
$3 or $4 is the cost of a box of cereal

100, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000
Quintillion [Europe=trillion]
18 zeros
10**18
Almost a quintillion cells in the human body
5 x 10**18 kilograms is the mass of Earth’s atmosphere
We are 240 quintillion meters away from the center of the Milky Way
10 key strokes on a standard keyboard yields 6 x 10**19 permutations



Then we tried to count as high as we could. We took a sheet of paper prepared with little squares on it and colored in one square for each ten "things" the child had done. It they scratched their nose, ten times, that was one square colored in or outlined (hands got tired!). If a child jumped 10 times, another square. Their papers went home with them to continue filling in. How high can they go?

The video clip Powers of Ten was available for viewing, but the young ones who joined us for this program were more interested in moving their bodies outside than sitting, so another time ...

Small Numbers

Date/Time: November 20, 2009 from 2 to 4 pm

We explored numbers on the largest scales, now we go to the teeny tiny realm. See the difference between micro and nano, experience exponential notation with negative exponents, and play with tiny numbers. A microscope will be used.

Registration option

Non-Member Family Registration $10.00 Member Family registration $5.00

Number of Attendees Over Age 3

Base 2 and Beyond

Date/time: October 23, 2009 from 2-4 pm

We are going to think like a computer - in base 2! To think like a computer, you need to read right to left, tell the difference between base 2 numbers and "regular" (base 10) numbers, and learn how to count again (with our fingers!). You will probably want to know how to convert from computer brain (base 2) to human brain (base 10) and back so your life is easier. Exponents go along with working in base 2, so a simple introduction will be available to those who wish it. If you are ready to go further, you can move onto octal numbers (base 8).

Registration option

Non-Member Family Registration $10.00 Member Family registration $5.00

Number of Attendees Over Age 3

Big Numbers, Big World

Date/Time: September 25, 2009 from 2-4 pm

What comes after a million? How many zillions of friends do you have? How many stars are there in the universe? I want to be a trillionaire! Sound familiar?

Come play with big numbers. Learn the names of the number families, discover the simplicity of exponential notation, compare all the big numbers we can think of, and more!