Bed Time Math

I was at a math in-service on Friday and got inspired by so many ideas. One of the ideas that I want to start right away is Bed Time Math.

In a short summary, Bed Time Math is a website that has daily math problems that align with today's news stories, or interesting facts that all deal with math.

Yesterdays math problem was about Hurricane Sandy:

Right now Hurricane Sandy is pounding the east coast of the United States, with sheets of pouring rain, an alarmingly surging ocean, and expected winds of over 75 miles an hour (at Bedtime Math here in New Jersey, we unfortunately have a front seat on all this). While it’s a little more excitement than we need to see the winds and waters rising, one just has to marvel at these incredible storms. North Atlantic hurricanes form over the ocean and spin counterclockwise, with the fastest winds wrapping around the very center of the storm, called the “eye.” Wind speeds can reach over 160 miles an hour in the worst (Category 5) storms, and several inches of rain can fall in just one day. As we ponder the numbers, for those riding out this hurricane we hope you are safe, warm and dry.

Wee ones (counting on fingers): If you get 3 inches of rain the first day of a hurricane and 4 more inches the next day, how many inches of rain did you get?

Little kids: In naming hurricanes, there are 5 letters we never use as the first letter, because there just aren’t a lot of first names that start with Q, U, X, Y or Z. How many letters do get used? (Reminder: the alphabet has 26 letters.) Bonus: If a hurricane dumps 1/2 inch of rain per hour on your town for 11 hours, how many inches of rain do you get?

Big kids: A category 3 hurricane has wind speeds of up to 129 miles per hour, and category 4 has speeds of up to 156 miles per hour. How much faster is the Category 4 top speed? Bonus: When hurricanes cause severe damage, their names are retired, meaning that name will never be used again. Since 1993, 38 names have been retired. How many names per year is that on average for that time period?

BedTimeMath.org

It has problems that range from little wee kids to big kids. You can sign up by email, facebook, follow on twitter, they make math very assessable!

I am sending home a packet of information and a calender.
For the month of November there are 30 days. I am hoping that the students can look at it and solve the problem at least every 3 days! That would mean they would have 10 "x's" on the calender. I do not care when it is completed, if they do it Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, or every 3 days, 10 days in a row, or more! I just want them to realize that math is everywhere and they use it all the time! In a Utopian world they would have time every night but I understand that they have siblings, sports, and other activities that keep them busy! I would also like to see parents complete the problems with their kids, or make it a sibling "bonding" time where the older child helps the "wee" or "little one" with their given problem.

This is not something that will be graded with a number, but more of a completion, I understand that families can get busy and life can get away from us!

I would love to hear feedback about how you plan to use BedTimeMath, and when you use it! I think it is super cool (if you have a phone with wifi) that they can email you, facebook, and tweet the problem, so now all that time spent waiting in the dentist office, or half time at basketball games can be time well spent with MATH!

Have a MATHEMATICAL time!

-miss koch  :)