Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Cubes to squares... BIG

In our exploration of number patterns with Cuisenaire rods (see the previous post) Clara and Rozenn began to explore the cubes to squares puzzle we'd looked at together yesterday:
Using cubes of each rod in turn
 they built up the square from the centre.
Claudia was busy making cubes - so she joined in!
At this point Mr Gregg thought it would be wise to stop - it would be difficult to find 49 sevens. But the girls were determined to press on - and they did it:
"Probably best to stop now," Mr Gregg said. "You'll never find 64 eights."
But - and Alicia joined the team now - the girls were not going to stop.
 Nines involved going to all the teachers in the school, and working through playtime.
"Hooray!"

The nines complete
 For the tens, we couldn't find a hundred of them, so the girls used some of the base 10 equipment:
 And - drum roll! - here it is!
There's a strange pattern of the odd and even numbers - can you see it?
And the lengths of the squares follows a neat pattern too!
On Friday we'll have another look at the numbers involved.
This pattern is amazing and beautiful - well done to the four girls for pushing on with it!

UPDATE
Alicia has some Cuisenaire rods at home - and this morning she brought in ten tens. Now almost all the tens are orange like they should be!

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