Class Number 2  - Angles, triangles and quadrilaterals

Our class began with warming up our brains with calculations in number sense and everyone did an excellent job.  We started the class with exploring making a shape with 4 straws and joining the straws with twist ties creating sides to our shape.  Later, we discussed what we knew about the shapes.

• some had four equal sides 
• Some did not
• some were rectangles, with opposite sides were equal
• all the shapes had angles were the straws met
• square and rectangles had "square corners"  known as right angles

Next we built shapes with 3 sides

• Some had 3 equal sides - equilateral triangle
• All had 3 angles
• All had 3 sides
• different sizes of triangles

 Sean and Andrew led us into a discussion about geometry words having Latin/Greek origins.
The tri in triangle mean 3  - like a tricycle, triathlon,
Sean tells us in Latin the numeral is tres meaning 3 and in Greek theis

It is important to know and understand these prefixes because they are clues in our understanding of geometry words.

Andrew helped us know more about Quadrilaterals
Quad  means 4
Lateral Means sides
Therefore quadrilaterals are shapes with 4 sides.
When you are talking about 4 angles its referred to as Quadrangles


We returned to the constructing quadrilaterals.  This is what we created:

 


 To learn more, try this site it is very useful and even has a math tutor. 
 http://www.tutorvista.com/content/math/quadrilateral/

Armed with this knowledge we will spend next time creating a puzzle together.  Get ready to put this knowledge to work and your creativity. 

Homework:

John, Andrew, and Sean - complete the venn diagram and you will share it with the others  in the next class.  Remember the purpose of a venn diagram is  to organize your thinking by comparing how a kite and a parallelogram are the same and different.   In the middle of the diagram write how they are the same and outsides how they are different.  It will be interesting what you come up with.

Patrick and Cynthia - you have two puzzles.

Everyone completes the dictionary pages.  Do a few each day.  These pages are very important to your understanding and necessary when we begin to write about our findings.  

Thank you everyone have a wonderful week.  Remember geometry is present everywhere in our lives.  See what you can observe when your out and about.


 

First Day

What would a Farmhouse School be without chickens?

Welcome learners to another year of discovery, observation, and exploration.

I am so happy to have everyone back at the farm table ready to learn and create new ideas.  I also want to extend  a warm welcome to our newest learner, Andrew.

This year we will travel with our knowledge of nature's patterns into how humans have used these patterns to make things.   We will study geometry, engineering, architecture, analogies, and writing poetry.  We also learn how to draw a designs and draw things to scale.

This year we will add to our 3 ring binders and we will keep a learning notebook.  We will look at Leonardo DaVinci and how he used his observations of nature's patterns to create some interesting inventions.  We will use his examples to help us write and record our research and ideas in our notebooks.  We will also keep a word wall of words that will help us describe our thinking and ideas.

Homework:  Purchase a composition book and plastic page protectors for your 3 ring binder. 
John, Sean, and Andrew go to the link section on the right and click on Khan Academy.  Just preview it and get an idea of what is included in this site on geometry.