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I was very excited to see how many words the children were able to value using the ascending method of dollar words. They were very clever. For example, one student found the value of LANDSCAPE was worth 75; he removed the E worth 5 and added ING worth 30; a DOLLAR WORD. Many students attempted the very long words I gave as challenges. I showed them that if they were within 5% of the actual value, they were almost ALIEN STATUS.

This week we introduced algebra to the children with an exercise called Dollar Words. Algebra uses letters and symbols to represent numbers. The Dollar Word challenge ascribes values to each letter by its position in the alphabet in ascending order. A=1, B=2, C=3 … Z=26. If the sum of all of those values equals exactly 100, it is a Dollar Word. 

For over 4000 years, devices have been used to measure and keep track of time. The current sexagesimal system of measurement dates to 2000 BC. This is a base 60 numbers system developed in an ancient civilization called Sumer in Mesopotamia. The Ancient Egyptians divided the day into two 12-hour periods and used large obelisks to track the movement of the Sun.

Since the timepiece has undergone so many changes, why shouldn’t the Mathletes endeavor to reinvent the timepiece? So, we did.

This is only for this week’s Wednesday, Thursday and Friday classes (Monday’s class will do this on June 2nd).   

The children were somewhat obsessed with creating cubes. One of the most satisfying activities after you create structures out of cubes is drawing them on isometric paper. Isometric drawings are 3D drawings used by architects and engineers. They show three sides, all in dimensional proportion, but none are shown as a true shape with 90 degree corners. All the vertical lines are drawn vertically but all horizontal lines are drawn at 30 degrees to the base line.