With Halloween just a few days away, it’s time to decorate. And if you’re a little creeped out by all those giant spiders and webs, you can try something a little less yucky and a little more colorful. We’re loving this idea from the Momma Owl’s Lab blog: Take a paper towel tube, punch little holes in it with a holepuncher, then stick a handful of glowsticks inside. Then take your polka-dotted decorations and put them in windows or outside on top of your bushes. Just remember, glowsticks last only a few hours once you snap them, so you’ll have to wait till Halloween itself!
Wee ones: How many glowsticks outside the tube can you see in the picture?
Little kids: If you grab 5 orange glowsticks and 4 yellow ones, how many do you have? Bonus: If you took those glowsticks from a pack of 50, how many are left in there to make glow-in-the-dark bracelets?
Big kids: If you punch 7 holes in each paper tube (all on one side so you can see them all), how many glowing spots can you get by filling 8 tubes with glowsticks? (Hint if needed: Multiplying by 8 is like doubling a number 3 times in a row.) Bonus: If a real spider is normally just 1/2 inch wide and the big decoration ones are 26 times as wide, how wide is the fake spider?
Answers:
Wee ones: 4 glowsticks.
Little kids: 9 glowsticks. Bonus: 41 glowsticks.
Big kids: 56 spots. Bonus: 13 inches.
And thank you to blogger Rachel Ford for this great idea!
Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking before she could walk, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.