In a small school district in North Dakota, elementary students make Valentine’s Day card boxes to collect cards from their friends. Some students just write their name on their boxes, others go all out. Here’s what Kylee created.

Notice how she has the planets proportionate in distance and size? Hmmmm. Wonder if she used math? Good job, Kylee!

Maren is starting her 4-year-old daughter with the RightStart™ Mathematics program. Here is a sneak peek into the process….

December 19, 2011

I got the Level A for my daughter Aspen, who is 4 years old. She is currently in pre-school and was so excited that now she gets to do “homework” like her big brother and sister. On her first lesson, she jumped up and down she was so happy to be working with the tools provided in the kit.

We just started with the tally sticks and working with some small objects up to three, and she flew through it with great success. At the end of the lesson, she was completely disappointed in the fact that she thought we were going to finish all the “cool stuff in the box”, but I let her know that she’d get to work on it lesson by lesson.

My older son, who is currently a senior in high school, struggled so much with math, that when he brought home his math homework, it brought both of us to tears at times. I only wish that I had been able to take advantage of this program with him while he was young.

When Aspen told him that she was going to be doing “math homework” with mom in the evening, he wasn’t thoroughly impressed. He’s now seeing how excited she is about it. Maybe it will be a bit contagious, and he’ll be able to take away some valuable insight as well as he works with her through the lessons.

January 3, 2012

Aspen is continuing to show her excitement over her math. She is completely loving the program. She’s consistently running through the house reciting her “one, two, buckle my shoe” rhyme she learned in Lesson 1. She asks several times a day if we can do another lesson.

She is forever looking at groups of items and letting me know how many are there. When I ask “if we take away 2, how many would there be?” or some other number, and she is excelling in her responses, both in accuracy and in speed.

People looked and smiled when we were shopping the other day. We were doing our little groupings and subtraction/addition lessons as we worked our way through a store.

The only thing that she has “struggled” with, and I use this term loosely, is her grasping of the terms of placement, such as “second, third” etc. This is still a bit of a mystery to her, but she is so willing to jump in with both feet to work harder to grasp it, it’s a complete joy.

Stay tuned for more reports on Aspen’s progress in Level A!

Want to see something amazing?

Check out Marshall and Karen’s fractal.

Since it’s the Christmas season they decided to make it a Cotter Fractal Tree!!

This post is a personal post with a delightful math twist. I am Kathleen Cotter Lawler, Joan Cotter’s daughter.

Today, December 1, 2011, my daughter Megan gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby boy. Carson Jody was born at 12:44 this afternoon. This amazing event turned me into a grandma, my mom, Joan, into a great grandma, and her mother, Florence, (who is 97 years and 1 day old) into a great great grandma.

I was honored and blessed to be present at Carson’s birth. Yes, I cried. There just aren’t words for what I experienced today and I will never forget this day. Ever.

So, rather than gush on and on and on (which I’ll probably be doing for the next 50 years), let’s look at the math aspect of today.

Clue: I’ve already told you.

Huh?

Check out Carson’s birthday.

December 1, 2011.

Also written as 12-1-11. Now take out the dashes.

12111        Not bad!

Now write the date as the Europeans do: date – month – year.

1 December 2011    or

1-12-11        or

11211.

Pretty cool, right?

OK. Maybe not totally fascinating, but I liked it and I love love LOVE my new grandson. Life is incredible.

P.S. We had a colt born a while back on May 6, 2007. That’d be 05-06-07. We named him Trigonometry and called him Trig for short. Carson’s lucky he didn’t get named Symmetry.