Life application learning

One afternoon while getting lost in the largest market in Africa, Zeru and I found a little café to retreat to for some tea.

We received our receipt and I noticed the arch it made on the table, like a little bridge or tunnel. My mind quickly jumped back many years to 8^th grade science class and a lesson on air pressure.

When you place a piece of paper under your bottom lip and blow across the top of the paper, the paper does not go down as many people would first think- but rather goes up because the air pressure is moved by your breath, but the air pressure below the paper says the same- pushing the paper up.

 

Pretty simple lesson, but I obviously never forgot it.

 

As we sat tired and quiet I picked up the receipt and excitedly got him interested in my cool trick.

 

I explained with my hands the invisible air pressure pushing equally on both dies of the receipt- and explained to the 4 ½ year old mind that I was going to blow those invisible pressures away! Just watch! They cannot press on the paper any more! So guess what happens when you blow the ones on the top away? The ones on the bottom still push! And look- the top ones cannot push back!

 

He actually got it pretty quickly and was eager to try himself. Many months later he will still pick up a rolled receipt and try this “trick” so the lesson must have stuck.

 

It is my hope in the near future to incorporate this lesson into some lessons on weather.

 

Counting beans construction!

 

In Ethiopia we had to get extra creative. Thankfully we had a dump truck on hand!

 

One of the cheapest foods we got at the local market was red beans- apparently only poor people eat them, so the average people refused to buy them. We loved them (except the 4 hour cook time of course) because they were a cheap, reliable, and non-perishable form of protein!

 

But perhaps what was best was their use as “construction blocks” for Zeru’s math lessons.

 

We started with number recognition (some how 7 and 9 get mixed up often- not sure how) then moved on to addition, subtraction, and even multiplication and division.

 

Here you can see our number recognition lesson.

 

There are many construction “Sites” and each site needs a specific number of “blocks” or “bricks” to build its building. Make sure each site has the correct number of bricks.

 

This is also useful for his learning to count to higher numbers (like those tricky teen numbers which make no sense. Why don’t we just say “five-teen?” That would be so much simpler! Or what about eleven- what does that even mean?)

 

For multiplication and division we make “construction sites” and each site takes the same number of “bricks.” If the contractor has 12 bricks, and 4 sites, how many bricks can he use for each site? Or if he has 3 sites and each uses 4 bricks, how many bricks will he need all together?

 

Pretty simple fun application of division and multiplication. And all we need is beans!

 

For added fun use real blocks and let your little builder create something which each set of “bricks” set out in each site!