Monopoly arithmetic

who: J1
when: at bedtime (we were supposed to go to sleep, but stayed up to play)
where: bedroom

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We have recently had an outbreak of Monopoly.

Apologies for blurriness; my shutter speed isn't fast
enough to catch the lightening action of this game

J1 and I have been playing a lot of City Monopoly.  Basic play is similar to the classic version, but on every turn the player uses a little randomization device (not a dice!) to determine how many enhancements they can build on their properties (1-3 building blocks or a railroad). This device can also be used a minute timer for auctions and an hour timer for the overall game. I guess these extra functions justify why they didn't just use a tetrahedron dice.

Monopoly games have been known to last for a very long time, but we aren't allowed to keep a partially-completed game lying around the house.  Instead, we play for about 40 minutes and then tally up the assets to see who has won. One of J1's interesting observations: we usually end up with less money than when we started the game.

Where's the math?
There is a ton of thinly veiled arithmetic in this game as every action requires some type of calculation. This ranges from 2 dice addition when moving the pieces to simple multiplication when calculating the cost of building several blocks to 3 digit subtraction when making change.

There are slightly more subtle points around deciding where to build property enhancements based on which properties give a greater return on capital.  J1 is starting to build an intuitive sense and has made some good observations when comparing between properties.  The most sophisticated analysis he started was looking at the first ten squares and talking about which ones are "easy" to hit.  For example, the very first property can't be hit until players have gone all the way around the board and he was excited to realize that..

Where's the game?
Strategically, there doesn't seem much depth.  The only frequent choice on each turn is where to build the enhancements, including railroads.  Occasionally, there is also a choice about where to build a hazard or a bonus structure.

I said that we usually end up with less money than at the start.  Actually, we have played 10 times and always lost money.  Seems that the winning strategy is just to avoid taking action.  For us, that mostly means not building enhancements, except for the very rare times when they immediately increase the properties rental value as much as the enhancement cost.

Challenges (Programming class 6)

Who: Baan Pathomtham 5th grade class
Where: at home
When: break between terms

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This is a set of challenges meant to test what the kids have learned this term. Initially, I had planned to use these during our last session, but the schedule requires us to leave these for independent work at home during the break.

Instructions

Do as much as you can.
These are fun, but are supposed to be hard.
Work on the challenges in any order you want
Use your computer, old programs, and any references you want.
If you have a question, ask! If you are confused about something, ask!

Challenge 1:
Someone deleted a line of code in two of my programs, can you fix them?

A. Program http://jgplay.pencilcode.net/edit/class/testStar is supposed to make this star

What is missing? Copy the program and add the missing line.

B. Program http://jgplay.pencilcode.net/edit/class/testHi is supposed to write a little message

What is missing? Copy the program and add the missing line.

Challenge 2:
What does the following program draw?

Challenge 3:
Write a program that draws this spiral:

Extra Challenge:
Add the button and animation to the spiral in challenge 3.

Intro to Functions (Programming Lesson 5)

Who: Baan Pathomtham 5th grade class  + Pooh teaching solo (Josh was traveling)
Where: at school
When: 2 hours Monday morning

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Goals:

1) Review for loop

2) Introduction to writing functions

What we did today:

0) Discussing the homework.  They showed the car they modified last time

1) We started with a short program which shows a for loop and and if statement.  This program draws a 20 pointed star:

              speed 100

      pen red

      for x in [1..20]

         fd 80

         rt 100

         if x is 10

            pause 2

2) The children were then asked to create 20 pointed stars in 2 more colors.  Then I showed them how to use function so that they can call the function to draw stars of their color choices.

           

              speed 100

      star = (color) ->

         pen color

         for x in [1..20]

           fd 80

           rt 100

           if x is 10

             pause 2

      star red

3) Then we played with how to make command buttons.  Again, initial program supplied and then asked to extend the program to have more buttons.  I showed that button can do complicated things like drawing the 20 pointed stars as in previous example or even drawing a wheel of a car that was part of their homework last time.

           

            pen sienna

     button 'R', -> rt 10

     button 'F', -> fd 10

     button 'D', -> dot 'green'

4) Last we played with a program that takes user inputs.  It seems effective to have them play around with the program initially and then ask them to extend it in a certain way.  In this case, I ask them to extend the program to also take user input for the size of the polygon.  This one was a bit challenging for them and it was very gratifying to me to see them struggle with it before arriving at the answer.

    

            await read "Color?", defer color

     await read "Sides?", defer sides

     pen color

     for [1..sides]

        fd 30

        rt 360/sides

Homework

Draw a flower garden or a forest.  

How many animals (domino counting challenges)

who: J3, J2, and J1, but the real questions here are for older children
when: morning with J3, evening with the older ones
where: family room
what material did we use: a set of animal dominoes

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When J3 counts, she often says "eleven" after "six" instead of "seven." I set out to show her the difference between 7 and 11.

First, we've got 7 dominoes, I put the blank sides up so that the pictures wouldn't distract us from counting them all as a consistent collection:

Next to those, I arranged a group of 11 (again, all blank sides up):

By this point, she wasn't interested.  I think she found some take-apart cars that needed to be investigated. I, however, was interested in two follow-up questions:

1. how many dominoes are in this set?
2. how many different animal types are there on these dominoes?

The challenge of the first question is coming up with techniques that don't require counting the remaining dominoes.  I have one strategy in mind (other than pure guesstimating) that I think is too advanced for J2 and J1.

For the second question, I think even a direct count requires a thoughtful strategy (though some simple ones are available).  What direct counting strategies can you suggest?

Below, I'll show you how many dominoes are in the set, but I'm still only going to show you the blank faces.  Is that enough information to figure out how many animal types?

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I'll give you the easy way to figure out how many dominoes are in the set

Now, can you answer the second question: how many animal types are used in this domino set?

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Advanced challenge:
Do the same thing with a pack of Spot It cards.

Gratitude

A bit of a different post today.  Don't worry, the three little J's will be back in frame soon.

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Someone once said we only appreciate our parents when we have children of our own.*
Perhaps the same thing is true for teaching. Now that I'm trying my hand, I feel compelled to go back to some of my own influences and express my gratitude.

Before I name names, a disclaimer: these are not the only good teachers I had, nor the only ones who influenced me, nor the only ones I appreciate. What does distinguish them is that they each did or said something that I still think about nearly every day, decades later.


To

• Mrs Midgett, for a math problem that stumped me
• Mrs Cannon, for a puzzle that intrigued me
• Mrs Schenter, for critical edits on a book report
• Mrs Garing, for a book recommendation I really loved
• Mr McLean, for his delight at a proof with minimal steps
• Mr Fleischer, for demanding questions

Thank you very much!

The lesson I try to take into my own interactions with children are: guide them to rewarding experiences, let them struggle, push them to do more than they think they can and, most of all, remember that my little comment could be something they carry for years to come.

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*The parenting quote: the closest I could get to a source was 42 things that change. From my attempted google searches, it seems far more popular are complaints about how parents can mess up their kids. Yikes!

Loopy loops (programming lesson 4)

Who: Baan Pathomtham 5th grade class (all present)
Where: at school
When: 2 hours Monday morning

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Animations

Again, starting with some code that the kids wrote:

One name in English

The first one done in Thai

Another one in Thai

This wasn't what I was expecting, but it works

What your child has learned

0. Reminder: You can see code that the students are writing through this directory. My own folder with a lot of examples is here: jgplay.pencilcode.net/edit and the class folder is here jgplay.pencilcode.net/class/edit.

1. They each gave a surprise presentation (in English!) of their homework code.  Each explained a bit about how their program worked and then answered questions: which letter was most difficult, was there anything they would change/improve about their code?

2. More nested for loops. We played with their copies of this code (Nesting Catalog) to see (a) what happens if we move the fd 40 code between loops and (b) how to fix our code if we increase the second loop to run from 3 sides to 10 sides (or more).

3. We improved some code that Gan had shown to the class last time.  A friend had written this code (WoWCar) and it was just begging to be rewritten with a for loop.

Remember this reference: http://guide.pencilcode.net/home/

Homework

This week, the challenge is to complete the car that the friend started.  Loops that draw the wheel will make it much easier to add another wheel (or maybe they are going to create a giant truck/lorry with 20 pairs of wheels?)

The following links will help with the geometric commands:

http://pencilcode.net/material/measuring.pdf
http://pencilcode.net/material/arcs.pdf
http://david.pencilcode.net/home/explainer/turns
http://david.pencilcode.net/home/explainer/curves

Please look through these with your children.

  
Some great things they did
As a reminder, this is just a couple of highlights from the class.  Overall, the four are really engaging well and taking advantage of the time to explore and test the programming system (including some little boy/non-traditional variable names).

Titus surprised me today when he was working on the problem of extending the shapes catalog to more sided shapes.  He found a way to shrink the shapes so that they would remain in a grid pattern (at the same time reducing the step between each shape.)  I always love it when someone has an approach that I didn't consider.

Boongie was fun to watch during the nested for loop exploration, particularly as he worked on the problem of getting all of his shapes to appear in the preview panel.

What I learned
The kids just need a little encouragement and a small hint to get going on an exploration.  With a light start, they can be off and running on their own steam.

I think they need a bit of encouragement to ask more questions.  Perhaps the language is an issue (English vs Thai)?

Tools for 2 year olds

Who: J3
When: early afternoon
Where: all over the house
What did we use: assorted play and real tools

Today, J3 was engaged in a serious construction project.  Putting together and taking apart this airplane:

Ours is fun, but the nuts and bolts don't levitate like this

One main step, left out of the manufacturers instructions, was to check whether there were any hidden bolts or screws in my head that could be loosened with the toy power drill. She kept mentioning various pieces that were coming out, but I hope we got them all back in.

Frankly, I love toys like this.  Obviously, there is a lot of counting along the way (do we have all the parts, do we have the right amount of each part), often there is matching (nuts and bolts, usually), and a lot of shapes to discuss and compare.  When we play together, I ask them to describe how things fit together, to encourage them to visualize the connections and to plan how they are going to sequence the construction.

Then, we moved on to the real tool box.

We did two main activities with the real tools. First, J3 found a small flashlight and explored the size of the lit spot she could make.  She had a lot of fun testing her theories about how to make it larger or smaller.  I tried asking if she thought the light would be smaller on her than on my because I'm bigger, but she'd already had enough experience shining it on large walls to realize that didn't matter.

Our second activity was an exploration of the wrenches (few) and screwdrivers (many) that we've collected.  She had near perfect results separating flat and Phillips heads:

That's quite a relief, given how prominently this task figures in so many standardized tests these days!
We arranged them by size, with some interesting discussion about the short 1/4 flat head:

Tool on the bottom: smaller because it is shorter or larger because it is fatter?

A question I posed that was lot on J3 (for now) and I'll try again with the older ones: if that screwdriver is 1/4 made in the USA, where was the other 3/4 made? Also, the longer one says "1/8 made in the USA." Why did they make different amounts of each tool in different places?

I'm afraid, but fully willing to admit, that this behavior shows that a I have a full-blown case of dad humor.