Triangles are Hardly Square (1512)

In reviewing my information on triangles, I realized I had some trouble recalling the terminology of some of the angles. I decided to type some of the main ideas for my blog to help refresh my brain.

Most of us can probably recognize a 90-degree angle, otherwise called a right angle. This is where two perpendicular straight lines intersect. Corners of books, tables, chair legs, picture frames, appliances, and shoeboxes are all examples of right angles. For right triangles, they might not necessarily have the same length of sides.

Right Angle

The second type of angle I needed to review was the acute angle. I envision my kids saying “oh, isn’t that a cute little….(fill in the blank)” This helps me think of an acute angle as being something smaller. Smaller than what? An acute angle is smaller than a right 90-degree angle. This means that the acute angle must be within 0 and 90 degrees. This would be the equivalent of looking at a clock and the angle of the hands are between the 12, which is straight up and the 3 which is at 90-degrees going clockwise in the circle.

Acute Angle

The final type of angle I want to cover is the obtuse angle. When I think obtuse I somewhat correlate it with obese, which to me says “big”. It might not be the most politically correct way to think about it, but it works for me. An obtuse angle is one that measures between 90-degrees and 180-degrees. If we recall that 90-degrees is the edge where two perpendicular lines meet, greater than 90-degrees would be the space between that right angle and before you hit a half circle. So this would correlate to one clock hand being at 12, and the other between 3 and 6.

Obtuse Angle

Angles should not scare people when they start learning geometry. It is actually quite fun to solve the measures of an angle based on information about the others. Yes, I am a math geek!

Here is an alien angle game where you need to estimate how far to move the line to create the appropriate angle. Alien Angles Game

 

Snowflakes, in July?? (1512)

Abby's first attempt

Abby's Snowflake

My 6 year old daughter asked for help to make snowflakes over the 4^th of July weekend when it was 90 degrees outside! We were on a camping trip and had a little downtime this past weekend, and my artistic daughter wanted to make something fun. We got out her paper and markers and decided to make some snowflakes. I started showing her how the paper needed to be folded from a square, then into a triangle and then another small triangle. She has made them before of course, but it seemed to be a good math lesson for this camping trip. My 4-year-old son was interested too, but he couldn’t quite get the cutting down for such a small area with his little fingers. The first attempt on her own ended up in a piece of paper crumbled into many pieces because she had cut through the edges too far. She soon got the hang of how deep she could cut in, which edges corresponded to the outside and which were the middle of the snowflake. The symmetry when it is done is what she loves the most! She practiced making tiny slits, diamonds, circles and even hearts while cutting through the layers.

Here is a quick video on tips to make the perfect snowflake.

It is never too early to introduce children to the names of shapes and where we find them in our every day life. There also has been many times where we are sitting down with the Magna Doodle and draw shapes and pictures. My son likes to say, “Build a house Mommy”! Obviously in our brains we usually start with the outside square or rectangle, then the triangle for a roof, then the square windows, rectangle vertical door, circle doorknob and any other details we might be imagining at the time. By introducing kids to these images early in life, it puts it in their head to be on the lookout for them. For instance, a sailboat on the lake looks like it has triangles that make up the sail reaching up high above the rest of the boat. If a teacher can get the kids involved with fun projects and they are much more willing to spend the time on learning about math!