April 11th, 2020
I was able to touch base with all of the families in the Gifted Program this week. It was great talking to everyone and to hear how families are adjusting to school from home. Next week I look forward to starting up virtual classes with students. An e-mail will be coming out shortly with info on how to join the sessions.Math Enrichment
I wanted to highlight a resource that may be of interested to families who are looking for enrichment opportunities in math. Thank you to parent Lindsay for bringing it to my attention. The Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC), out of the University of Waterloo, has lots of great activities. Of particular interest is CEMC at Home. It is described on their website as follows:CEMC at Home has been developed to support teachers, students and parents during these challenging times. Most weekdays, we will post something for each of four grade levels: Grade 4 to 6, Grade 7/8, Grade 9/10 and Grade 11/12. The goal is to provide a wide variety of fun and educational ways to do mathematics and computer science while at home practicing social distancing. The resources will include games, new problems to solve, applications, videos, pointers to existing materials and more.The resources are for kids in grades 4 and up, but many of the grade 2s and 3s would be able to handle the questions. The CEMC resources that I have used in the past have been really well written, and they provide detailed solutions. Some of the parents may remember writing math contests back when they were in high school (the Gauss, Pascal, Cayley, Fermat, Euclid contests); these are run by the CEMC.
Brain Teasers
Now for everyone who needs to have their brains teased...Answers to the brain teasers are at the end of this post.
Three Lightbulbs and Three Switches
There are three light switches outside of a room– labeled number one, number two, and number three. The door to the room is closed and you can’t see in. All three switches are off.
You need to figure out which switch belongs to which bulb. You can use the switches however you want to, but can only enter the room once. How do you do it?
Riddles:
- A clerk at the butcher shop is six feet tall and wears size 10 shoes. What does he weigh?
- A farmer has 19 sheep on his land. One day, a big storm hits and all but seven run away. How many sheep does the farmer have left?
- Your sock drawer only contains 18 white socks and 18 blue socks. How many times do you need to reach inside the drawer and take out a sock to guarantee a matching pair?
Answers are below.
Thanks for checking out this post, and I look forward to seeing the students online in a couple of days!
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Answers
Three Lightbulbs
- First a hint: if we were doing this in person I could let you know if your were getting warmer or colder with your answers
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Now the light bulbs and switches answer
- turn on switch #1 and leave it on for about10 minutes
- turn off switch #1 and turn on switch #2 and then enter the room
- the light that is on, is controlled by switch #2
- the light that is warm or hot to the touch is controlled by switch #1
- the remaining light (it should be cool to the touch) is controlled by switch #3
Riddles
- The butcher weighs meat!
- Seven (the riddle says that "all but seven run away", meaning that the rest ran away and 7 are still there)
- Three times. By the third time you will select a sock that will match one of the two socks you already have.
Triangles #3 and #8 are identical.
