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By Mom Unplugged, March 2, 2010 4:59 pm

Teachers and parents, are you looking for a fun and different math activity for your students or kids? Then you’ll be happy to learn that tomorrow, March 3rd 2010, is World Math(s) Day!

Teachers can sign their classes up to participate in this online math contest with same-aged students (5-18 years) from around the globe for a chance to win prizes. Individual students or homeschooling families can register too. This year for the first time there is even a category for teachers and parents who want to join in the fun. Plus, it is all COMPLETELY FREE!

Here is how it works:

“Students play at home and at school against other students around the world in live games of mental arithmetic. Each game lasts for 60 seconds and students can play up to 500 games, earning points for each correct answer. The students who answer the most questions appear in the Hall of Fame. Students cannot select their level but will move up as they progress.”

(“About World Maths Day,” from the World Maths Day website)

So far there are over 2 million students from 37,000 schools in 200 countries registered for tomorrow’s event. The goal is to beat last year’s world record of correctly answering 452,681,681 questions!

I had fun just browsing the lists of students and classes registered from an amazing array of locations. It would make for a great geography lesson in addition to the math fun!

Head on over right now and register your students, children, and yourself!

LINKS:

World Maths Day 2010 Website

World Maths Day 2010 Official Blog

Comments (5)

By Mom Unplugged, March 1, 2010 8:46 pm

The Unplugged Project theme for the month of March will be: Sphere

The linky is below and will remain open until April 1st. On April 1st I will post a new Unplugged Project theme.

If you are wondering what the Unplugged Project is, then please read more about it here. We’d love to have you join in!

The basics are the following:

• Please only link if you have done a project that is related to the theme. Don’t just put your website in there because you like the idea of the project. I appreciate the support, but if I don’t see a project, then I’ll have to delete your link.

• Please don’t link until you actually have a post to link to. The post should not simply describe an intention, but document an actual completed project.

• When you link, please link to your POST, not just your blog. I am trying to build a library of project ideas, so we want people to always be able to find your project in the future. If you link simply to your blog, they won’t be able to find your post later on. (Feel free to email me if you have a question about this.)

• Don’t worry about the “accuracy” of your connection to the theme. Be creative, have fun, and think “outside the box” if you wish. For example, the theme was once soft and we made moth feeders out of soft cotton balls. Another time the theme was kitchen and we made Oobleck because it was made with cornstarch which is a substance you find in the kitchen, right? If you think about it, you can find a connection with almost anything and that is what is really fun!

• If you have the time, energy, and inspiration to come up with more than one project for sphere that’s great! Feel free to link to each sphere project separately in the linky.

• If you have no blog, then please leave a comment on this post with a description of what you did. The more ideas we get, the better!

• It takes a lot of time and energy to put this project together and I would greatly appreciate a link to Unplug Your Kids in your project post. Thank you and enjoy!

Photo is from Wikipedia, by Andrzej Barabasz.

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By Mom Unplugged, February 28, 2010 9:40 pm

I promised another Spiral Unplugged Project post and I am finally here with it - at the eleventh hour (a new Monthly Unplugged Project theme begins tomorrow)!

All day yesterday I was looking after four girls in addition to my own two girls (my son was very happy to escape this overdose of estrogen by fleeing to a friend’s house).

The age of the girls ranged from 4 to 11 and after boredom appeared to be setting in, I tried this totally retro idea out on them: Spirograph Shrinky Dinks. Just 3 words: THEY-LOVED-IT.

I had bought some shrink plastic at a Michael’s craft store on my last trip to the big city. We pinned the Spirograph rings on to the plastic sheets with no problems. NOTE: The frosted type of paper worked out best with markers, the shiny white tended to smear.

Since my original Spirograph ball point pens were long dead after 30+ years, I had also bought some fine point Sharpies in many different colors and they worked great! The tip was small and long enough to fit through the holes in the Spirograph disks and produce beautiful results.

Before they went in the oven, we punched holes in some of the finished Shrinky Dinks. A regular one-hole paper punch works fine and, once shrunk, produces a hole large enough for a thread or fine wire. If you need to thread on something larger than that, then punch several times to make a bigger hole.

The girls strung them on thread to make necklaces. I actually have an even fancier idea in mind, so check back!

If you like this, then be sure to read my original Spirograph post. To find out how to make your own Shrinky Dink plastic from home trash, don’t miss my Homemade Shrinky Dinks post!

Comments (9)

By Mom Unplugged, February 14, 2010 6:54 pm

The theme for this month’s Unplugged Project is spiral. All along I had been thinking Spirograph and dug out my old Spirograph sets (yes, I am a packrat!), but we haven’t had a chance to play with those yet.

Coincidentally, my husband gave each of the kids a gift bag full of Valentine’s Day goodies, including a very cute, small, heart-shaped Spirograph-type toy! They pulled those out this afternoon and had a blast with them. It was their first time playing with such a thing (although the results reminded the kids of our very fun string art project).

It is still a bit hard for my 4 year-old to manage on her own (holding frame still and keeping the gear tracking along the teeth), but she loved it and it seems like a great exercise in fine motor skills.

When I was a child, the classic Kenner Spirograph was as ubiquitous as Crayola Crayons or Play-Doh. Everyone had one! But nowadays, as far as I can tell, this is considered a “vintage toy” that can only be found at places like Ebay. Am I vintage too?? Feeling a little old here…

Anyhow, I have lots of not-so-vintage ideas of things to do with our Spirograph creations. Hopefully we’ll get to try them and post about it before the end of the month.

LINKS:

• There are still Spirograph-like sets out there.

• Here’s a simple one that looks pretty good to me: Hypotrochoid Art Set.

• The mathematics and history of Spirograph.

• Find a real Spirograph set on Ebay!

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Do you have a spiral-themed project to share? Then please consider joining our Monthly Unplugged Project and link to your post here. Read more about the Monthly Unplugged Project here!

Comments (1)

By Mom Unplugged, February 2, 2010 11:51 am

$1,350.03

That’s how much a class of thirteen 6 to 9 year-olds raised for

Partners in Health’s Haiti relief fund

with a simple Book & Bake Sale!

If they can do it, you can do it too!

How they did it:

Two weeks ahead of time:

• They hung a sign on the school door asking for donations of books and baked goods for our Haiti fundraiser.
• They placed an empty box in the school entryway for collecting the books.
• They also put a sealed box in the lobby for any impromptu donations.

Day before, set-up:

• The day before the sale they accepted baked goods.
• After school they sorted the books into children and adult piles.
• They organized the children’s books into separate boxes and baskets based on level (picture books, readers, chapter books).
• Everything was set up on tables in our tiny school entryway with a simple pricing system posted.

The Sale:

• The morning of the sale, they set up the baked goods outside the door on a table (it was so cold and snowy that there was no danger of spoilage!).
• The school is on a side street, so they put out a sign on the main road nearby. They also put signs in the grocery store and the library. All signs said clearly that proceeds would be for Haiti.
• The sealed box went to a prominent location on the book table, with a basket nearby with a few small bills and coins for making change.
• They hung a Haitian flag and also posted some information about Partners in Health so any interested people could read more about where their money would be going.

Post-Sale:

• I helped them sort through the leftover books and we separated the ones that were fairly recent and looked pretty new.
• We took these “good” leftovers to our local bookstore so the owner could buy any that would work for her used book section. She ended up buying almost all of them, and even gave us more than her normal cash price since we were doing this for Haiti! (Be sure to let a bookstore know that you are selling for Haiti)
• The kids packed up the other books and we put them in storage for our annual school yard sale.

Counting:

• Practical math lesson: The children counted the cash and were SO excited, especially when they found a $100 bill in the box!
• Their teacher counted the checks for privacy reasons (NOTE: For ease of accounting, we made sure people made their checks out directly to Partners in Health and not to our school).
• I took the cash to the bank and traded it in for a cashiers check made out to Partners in Health.

And voilà! Not a whole lot of effort really, but now we have a nice donation to send off to Partners in Health and the kids feel GREAT!

Why not try it with your school?

For more fundraising ideas, please read Help Your Kids Help Haiti.