a math experiment

Today in math we were talking about place value.  My mom read that "there are about 2 billion seconds in a lifetime."  I said that it was not true because most people live till they are about 50 years old, so I think people live more than 2 billion seconds.  So by 50 years old, they will have lived more than 2 billion seconds.

My mom is having me find out if I am right or not.

She is having me find out how many seconds I was when I turned 9.  She also is having me find out how many seconds old you are when you turn 50.  Last but not least, she is having me figure out how many seconds the average age of a person is. 

First of all I have to find out how many seconds there are in an hour.  I know there are 60 sec in a minute and there are 60 min in an hour. 

60 x 60 = 3,600 sec in an hour

Second I need to figure out how many seconds there are in a day.  I know there are 1,200 sec in an hour and there are 24 hours in a day.

3,600 x 24 = 86,400 sec in a day

Third, I need to find out how many seconds are in a year.  I know there are 28,800 seconds in a day and there are 365 days in a year (not counting leap years).

86,400 x 365 = 31,536,000 sec in a year.

(a) Now I am solving for how many seconds old I was when I turned nine.  I already know how seconds are in a year.

31,536,000 x 9 = 283,824,00 sec in 9 years

(b) Now I am solving for how many seconds are in 50 years.

31,536,000 x 50 = 1,576,800,000

So, I was wrong if they live 50 years!

(c) Now I am figuring out how many seconds there are in the average lifetime.  I am choosing the United States because I live there.  The average life in the United States is 78.2 years.  I am rounding down to to 78.

31,536,000 x 78 = 2,459,808,000

So I am sort of right.  They do live more than 2 billion seconds!

Things I learned:
I learned there are less seconds than I thought in a lifetime.  I thought that there were 4 billion.
I also learned that 60 x 60 is not 1,200.  This mistake taught me to always check my work.  I did not check my work and I was wrong, so I had to go back and do most of it again.

math games

I have been having fun finding simple math games and either introducing them to Emma or revamping them slightly.

She was playing one of them last night and kept having me shufle the cards so she could play again. We started with cards 2-9 and as I flipped them over she had to tell me what she needed to add to that card to make ten. Then I added the aces and she had to keep flipping them until she could make a sum of 10 with two cards. Had her tell me which card she needed to make the sum, which then combined both games. I think we are going to try this as a memory game soon too.

My find of the day was a pair of dice that are 20 sided. Still not sure what we will do with them but I am sure once we hit addition and subraction up to 20, they will come in handy!

Music to my ears...

Today we were running errands and Emma tells me "Mom, I don't ever want to stop learning math!" She is pretty excited her new math curriculum is here and that I have put together a couple games for her. We did part of unit one for math today. It was linking up the numbers to their names. So before hand, I got the flash cards out and ran through them with her. I had not introduced them yet since I did not want them as sight words. She is able to read 7 out of 11 (0-10) so far and there is one or two that she will be able to read once we get to that point in her reading.

After that we played one of her new "games" - Monkey Math. It is a file folder game with 18 monkeys holding signs of different amounts of money from 12 cents to $1.75. It comes with print outs of money to match up to the monkies (for instance for 12 cents, the printout has a dime and two pennies). I decided instead to break out her fake money and let her figure it out. It was fun doing addition on paper, and even though we are not to that yet (adding two place values), she was picking up on some of it.

Another highlight for me was that she was able to read the directions to her math worksheet today! Had to introduce a new rule (s in has) and remind her that "e" makes the vowel say its name (we have not officially covered this yet, just introduced today for the number names), but she did it. The directions were "Check the set that has more." and "Check the set that has less."

Math today

We finally had a day where we did not fly through a complete unit of math. A lot of it was hands on as well as a new concept. She is working on numbers above ten as well as prepping for addition and subtraction. They are having her group items in groups of 10s and 1s. I did a lot more than the book called for in prep for one of the pages. Some pics from today:

She had 6 baggies full of Legos. Each baggie had 10 of 1 color, a random number of another. She had to seperate the 10 into a pile on her left and the other color in a pile on the right. Then she had to glue #'s into this "(empty box) and (empty box) makes (empty box)."







Prep working getting ready to move into placing 1 in the 10's and a certain number in the 1's.






Tomorrow is story time at the library and in the afternoon a playdate with lots of kids. Mom's are getting together 1x a month to work on crafts. I am going to attempt to get started on her Halloween costume. That is if I can get the pieces cut out tonight. Fabric is washed and in the dryer.