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Many Mathletes over the years have dabbled in finding Dollar Words.  These are English words that when you give a value to each letter add up to one hunderd exactly.  A=1 B=2 C=3 .....  Z=26.

One example is Pumpkin.

There are many stategies to finding these words and even more to combine the numbers.  I will be teaching a method of circling your ones place numbers and combining them with brackets to add up to 10 or 20 with remainders.  Then they add the tens place numbers and combine the ones place total to get their sum.

Over 2,500 years ago Pythagorus created a society called the Semi-Circles that studied Numerology.

Numerology is the mystical study of the relationship between numbers and physical objects and people. Numerology is to mathematics to astrology and astronomy or alchemy chemistry. It is not serious mathematics, but it is a lot of fun.

Multiplying by 11

The skill set this reinforces is simple addition but within seconds we end up with the product of any number and 11.

First, students write down any number of any number of digits.

Second, they repeat the number below the first but move the number to the left one "place." The ones digit of the second number is directly below the tens digit of the first number.

Third, the students add the two numbers.

We continued our exploration of squares by introducing the greatest theorem in the history of mathematics -- the Pythagorean Theorem: the sum of the squares of the legs of a right triangle will equal the square of the hypotenuse.  We used our 3x3 and 4x4 and 5x5 square of tennis balls to show the most simple Pythagorean triple, a 3-4-5 triangle. 

This week we introduced anti-numbers like anti-tens.  The "anti-ten" of 3 is 7; the "anti-ten" of 4 is 6 and so on.

We gave the children several anti-numbers to challenge them to understand friendly numbers and important pairs.  For example, they should know their anti-nines and frankly any anti-prime number.

See the attached pdf for easy to use worksheets.