Dear Lower School Families,
Today I share with you two things from the past week: the first is a parenting article that was shared with me, and the second is a math story from our After School Program.
At our parent orientation this September, we enjoyed Rob Evans’ insights on how we can partner to raise happy, confident and successful children. I share with you an interesting article for your weekend read (click here). There are fascinating parallels to consider in our work, as we balance firm boundaries and expectations, with care and love for our children. Enjoy. I look forward to discussing your thoughts when we meet on campus.
This fall, Gary Shrager and long-time Milton math teacher and administrator Annette Raphel have teamed up to facilitate our Thursday afternoon Math Club. The first week, students played a game called “Corner the Market,” a board game that required them to make predictions about resources and to allocate resources so their “business” would come out on top. This game, sometimes used in graduate school game theory classes or business schools, demonstrates how mathematical decision-making can optimize the chances a business has of prospering. According to Mr. Shrager, it was “delightful to watch the students handle complex decisions in their quest for success.” The second activity of Week 1 was an exploration of triangular numbers – the series of numbers (1, 3, 6, 10, etc.) that are obtained by continued summation of the natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). Do you know what the 100th triangular number is? Can you figure it out? The students in the workshop did! In the second session, the group tackled the Four Triangle problem. Students cut two squares in half, making four triangles. They then worked to figure out how many ways the triangles could be put back together, following the rule that two sides had to be the same length to be connected. Try it at home! The students categorized the different shapes they created. Who knew math could be so much fun?
Enjoy your weekend,
Racheal