Math and the Great Outdoors

We took advantage of everyone's good health (finally!) yesterday to get outside and enjoy God's beautiful work. We are just starting to have the true feel of fall in our area. And I know when I think of Fall, I think math! Well, maybe not right away, but I did think of Fall and Math together.

In math, the Anthony is working on addition/subtraction and measuring, and Jerimiah is working on geometry/angles. I decided to do a review for them and reinforce graphing and fractions.

First, we went to a beautiful local park. Our mission was to collect data on the trees on our short walk. We counted how many were red, yellow, orange, green, and brown.

The data was then formed into a bar graph. We decided that we wanted to make our bar graph horizontal. This was a great way to review horizontal and vertical.

  Anthony handled the vertical axis by labeling our colors.

 Jerimiah then measured the horizontal axis. He looked at the data, and determined a common factor among most of the numbers. All numbers but one were divisible by three, so we divided our horizontal axis into sections by three. It worked out that each inch equaled one unit.

 Anthony measured to find 6 inches for the number of red trees.

 Then we glued each bar to the correct point on the graph.

 Jerimiah worked on measuring and cutting the yellow bar.

 Dad was hard at work. At the time, I thought he was playing on Facebook. Turns out, he was researching how to make rope. You know, just in case there really was a blackout, like on Revolution. (The TV show.) Good info. I love that man.

 After the graph was completed, we had Jerimiah work on some fractions.

Our completed projects. The kids liked this, but of course they really liked playing at the playground.

How are you working on Math?