"woodwork math" lessons for kids?

[scrubbyfish]

My 10 year old really struggles with learning math in conventional ways (worksheets, memorization). He is also very excited about building with wood, and is being guided by a neighbour in that. The neighbour and I, though, are both limited in the skill of teaching math.

Does anyone know of an online (or DVD) class teaching math specific to and in the context of woodwork? One for kids, especially grades 1-4, would be ideal, but an adult education one might work too.

[RyanAtTanagra]

Excellent question, posting to follow.  Sorry, no tips :-(

I will say it's a good idea.  A few years ago I needed to calculate a cut angle while only knowing a couple other figures (length of one side and another angle, or something), and looked up how to go about that and it ended up being a trigonometry function (SIN/COS/TAN).  Prior to that I didn't know that crap had an actual real-life application.

[tonysemail]

following this topic

my kid is age 6 and we started exploring online options for math practice.
so far, i found these two websites that offer math practice
www.ixl.com
www.mathscore.com

[Lis]

http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/mkaet.math.ga.woodworker/real-life-math-woodworker/

I love PBS Learning. This particular video is probably a bit too advanced (recommended for grades 6-8), but it may give you a good starting point on how to figure out how to apply woodworking to math.

I don't have kids yet, and being a 10 year old was quite a long time ago for me :) What kind of math is he learning and having trouble with?

[mozar]

I hated trig but I found geometry pretty easy as a non math person. You can watch any class together, coursera, kahn academy, and start applying it.

[scrubbyfish]

For those following for math in general, I will add:
BrainPop Jr
BrainPop
Mathletics

Like Tonysemail, we also enjoyed IXL, and, as mozar noted, khan academy is great. (I haven't tried coursera for a kid yet.) These sites were all awesome during our homeschooling stretch. Conventional school methods have been poor for him. I'm setting him up for online math over the summer, but am really excited about the link posted by Lis (thank you!!) re: woodworker math, just because he will be super motivated and excited to do math that makes sense in the context of his current hobby. My dad had only elementary school, but was an absolute whiz with "woodworking maths", learning applications as he went within that context.

Lis, in three days of woodworking, this has what has come up: angles/degrees, adding fractions, dividing fractions (even just in half), measurements of 8ths and 16ths, understanding that 1/4 is the same as .25 which is the same as a section of pie (i.e., relating the concepts).

[marty998]

Prior to that I didn't know that crap [Trig] had an actual real-life application.

You start to see the applications of Trig functions in higher level maths courses. Engineering would be fracked without it.

There are a few memory "triggers" I remember from school

From the identity: Sin^2 theta + Cos^2 theta = 1

You can get:

sec^2 theta = 1 + tan^2 theta 

(Sexy tans)

cosec^2 theta = 1 + cot^2 theta

(Cosy cots)


Maths is fun lol. Especially when you talk about real and unreal roots (of polynomials) to 16 year olds.

Some even have complex roots!