What is the real distance?

With the launch of our Marco Polo study, we are beginning to increase our focus on Geography-related activities.  One of the things Tiger learnt recently was to use a map scale.

I introduced the lesson by having him make a world map using cut-outs of the seven continents, labels for four oceans, and labels for the equator and the prime meridian.

Once he was happy with the relative positions of the labels and cut-outs, Tiger checked his layout with that printed in a children's atlas before gluing his pieces in place.

Here was his initial piece.  Did you spot the mistake?  I didn't either.

It was Tiger who, after a few minutes, remembered our trip to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich where he had stood on the prime meridian.

What does that mean?  That means that in his previous layout, Europe was placed too far away from the line that represented the prime meridan.  I was very glad that Tiger made the connection himself and spotted his own mistake before I did.

So, he removed the pieces carefully and re-did the right-hand side of his map:

The correct map

We then used the map above to discuss the practicalities of using a scale to represent the actual distance and size of locations on a map.

In order to understand the concept of map scale better, I asked Tiger to copy the scale found in a map onto an index card, then use that copied scale to measure the distance of a few places on the map, for example between Manchester and London.

We tried out a few different examples to make sure that Tiger has understood completely how to use and read a map scale.  All of the examples so far measured direct, straight-line distances.  Following that, I asked Tiger how he would measure the distance of a winding road or river on a map using the scale.  Tiger suggested twisting and turning his index card scale this way and that, but I suggested to him that perhaps there was an easier way.  When he failed to think of it after a few moments, I suggested using a piece of string.

We ended the lesson with a quick review.

Inspired by the book, Tiger drew a few maps of different scales -- from the location of our county to a floor plan of the house.

Country map

County map

Town map

Street map

Floor plan

It's great when the child extends the lessons himself!

Our application work came about by (1) Tiger taking measurements of his own feet before working out the actual measurements of the room first in feet, then converting the feet measurement into centimetres and metres.

(2) Scaling up a copy of a small drawing.  This is a very common scaling up method used by artists.

Once the scaled up drawing was completed, Tiger went over the outline with a black permanent marker before filling in watercolour.

The lessons above come from these books:

This post is linked up to:
1) Look What We Did!
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #9
3) History and Geography Meme #67
4) Virtual Refrigerator
5) Homeschool Mother's Journal: March 22, 2013
6) Hobbies and Handicrafts - March 22
7) Collage Friday - Poetry, Pastels and Purging
8) TGIF Linky Party #68
9) Homeschool Review
10) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with All the Birds
11) Math Monday Blog Hop #92
12) Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/26/13

What's the time, Mr. Wolf?

To start off this topic, Tiger read a book that we have on the shelf for many years and that which was used a few years ago in his preschool years:

As a revision to what Tiger already knew of reading the clock, we worked through the Telling Time activity by making a clock face and reading various times.

To make sure that Tiger knew how to tell time both in numbers and words, we played the What's the Time? game.  First we matched the words with the time shown on the clock faces, then we turned the pieces of paper over and played a memory game with the same set.

 

After the basic telling time exercise, we proceeded to work out a few problems that required carrying over between hours and minutes.

We then worked through a few maths games:
1. Clocks
2. How Many Times?

3. The Time Is... For this game, Tiger started out sequencing set A, followed by set B.  He then combined both sets and sequenced all the cards.  The interesting part of this game is the mixture of analog and digital times, so that the analog clock is open to interpretation as to whether it shows A.M. or P.M.  I told Tiger that as long as he could provide a valid reason to the way he sequenced the cards, it's entirely up to him how he interpreted the analog time.

4. Two Clocks

5. The trickest of all was the Wonky Watches, which required quite a bit more thinking, as well as applied division.

To take another perspective on the concept of time, Tiger read this book,

followed by a related clip:

All of a sudden, our maths topic took on a turn into physics, so we watched two more clips which led to more discussions about the concept of time, how it came about, using maths to represent observations and natural phoenomena, the correlation between the initial hypothesis and the mathematical proof, etc.

Did we understand everything from the two clips above?  No.  Did watching them generate some interesting questions and discussions between us?  Yes, and that's good enough for us for now.

This post is linked up to:
1) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #7
2) Hobbies and Handicrafts - March 8
3) Collage Friday - I wouldn't Trade This for the World
4) TGIF Linky Party #66
5) It's a Wrap
6) Creative Learning Link Up #5
7) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One where Most of the Kids were Sick
8) Share it Saturday - Exploring Color
9) The Sunday Showcase - 3/9/13
10) Math Monday Blog Hop #90
11) Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/12/13
12) Look What We Did!