Engaging math activities for the summer break - Day 7
The setup Students are seated in a circle. The number of students may be arbitrary, but in a small group it is much easier to discern the idea behind this activity. With a large number of students, it is preferable to form several groups of about 4-5 kids than to have a single big one. Students receive candy, each an even number of pieces.
What is the activity? At every step, students hand half of their candy to their neighbor on the right. For the next step, students who end up with an odd number of candies receive an extra one from the teacher. The process continues.
What's to observe? Sooner or later all the student have equal amounts of candy. This is a natural end of the activity.
What's to prove? That this is indeed always so, regardless of the number of children or the amounts of candy they start with.
An extra observation: Students may arrive at the expected conclusion after making additional observations. The important are these: the maximum individual amount of candy may not increase at a step; the minimal amount of individual candy may not decrease. The number of occurrences of the minimum necessarily decreases. When there is only one instance of the minimum, it is eliminated after one step.
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Well .. if you want to atract their attention , you need to give them something
December 15th, 2011 at 9:33 am