Story Time? How about Bed Time Math

One of the biggest topics in mathematical education is the integration of math concepts into “real world” scenarios.  When children see how we as adults use mathematics in our daily life it makes learning the subject relevant for them.

  

Recently, I came across a very interesting article in Time magazine entitled “Beyond Counting Sheep.  Why math is the hot new bedtime reading”, by Bonnie Rochman.  This article is about an astrophysicist turned stay at home mom whose mission is to “change the way parents put their kids to bed”.  The mom, Laura Bilodeau Overdeck, is the founder of a great web-site called Bedtime Math  (Bedtimemath.org).  This web-site offers interesting “real world” problems that are fun for every age group and center on current events, holidays, and home life.  Her vision is to have parents problem solve with their children as part of their nightly routine; as you would read your child a story, you would also solve a problem together.  Solutions to each problem can also be found on this web-site.

I hope you have an opportunity to try this web-site and approach out. 

In the meantime here are some sample problems from Bedtimemath.org:

Crowd-Diving Posted on February 16, 2013 by laura

Skydiving has been a favorite topic here, because there are few things in life as dramatic as hurling yourself out of a plane from thousands of feet above the ground. Well, this group of 100 skydivers took it to a new level: they all jumped out of planes at the same time, then used their wingsuits to steer themselves into a nice neat square formation of people in the sky. It set the record for the number of people in one skydive formation – well, okay, that’s because it’s the first formation anyone has turned in for the record. But given that it took 100 people from 21 countries jumping out of 5 planes, they obviously earned the honor.

Wee ones: If you were one of the divers and you were on the 1st of the 5 airplanes to take off, how many planes took off after you?

Little kids: The skydivers jumped from 13,000 feet. If they didn’t pull their parachutes until they were 6,000 feet above the ground, for how many thousands of feet did they fall first? Bonus: If the 100 skydivers were divided evenly among the 5 planes, how many people jumped out of each one?

Big kids: The 100 divers spread out in an almost perfect square in the sky. If it had been a perfect square, how many people wide would that square have to be? Bonus: To skydive wearing a wingsuit, you need to do at least 200 dives before that. At least how many dives must the group of 100 have done in total before this? (Hint: to multiply a number by 100, tack 2 zeroes on to the end of it.)