On Friday, the Herons worked on some more topics in discrete math — knot and map theory. I stumbled across an amazing video of mathematical doodling, did some research and shared what I'd learned so far with the Herons. I don't intend for them to master this math — indeed, I have only the most basic understanding of it. Instead, I want to give them a taste of the incredibly varied and marvelous world of mathematics. So often, even as adults, we just think of math as computation. Discrete math (from figuring out how to solve mazes to finding combinations of icecream flavors to coloring any map in the world with just 4 colors) opens the kids' eyes to the incredibly diverse world of math in a way they can much more easily grasp than me doing a calculus equation on the board. It also enables kids who struggle with computational math to see the "wonder" in mathematics without having to recognize number patterns. It also gives me a chance to explore and have them seeing me in the act of exploration.
If you want to see more of what discrete math entails, I urge you to visit the Mega Mathematics site created by the scientists at Los Alomos. It's aimed at upper elementary kids and is fantastic. Here's the math doodle video for you to enjoy (the narrator has a quirky sense of humor and a fascination with snakes that I don't share but her math is solid)
The Rookery 
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