On June 2, the Robertson Program took part in the University of Toronto’s annual spring reunion. Bev Caswell, Larisa Lam and Zach Pedersen, along with second-year MA-CSE students Breanna Wu and Sukanya Rastogi, brought math and science activities to the OISE Kids’ Passport Tent located at the St. George Campus. Many former U of T students visited the tent, giving us an opportunity to meet their children!
We introduced many math activities to strengthen children’s spatial reasoning and geometric thinking. This included cookie sheet symmetry, framework building, pentomino puzzles, tangram animals, hole punch symmetry, pattern block activities, the hexagon card game, animal grid coding and dice games. We also used a radar gun to determine the speed of a bean bag being thrown at a wall. We compared the speed of the throw by the length of the individual’s arm, as well as their age. This demonstrates how easy it is to generate data for children to analyze mathematically.
Each child that visited us also received a package of pentominoes to take home!
We were lucky to share the tent with OISE professor Mary Reid and her math team! Special thanks to Natalie Neumann Butler, External Relations Coordinator at OISE/University of Toronto, for all of her work organizing this event!
The Robertson Program took part in the OISE Kids’ Passport Tent, representing the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study.
