Services & ResourcesWolfram ForumsMathGroup Archive

[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]

Re: Mathematica for gifted elementary school children

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg98953] Re: [mg98863] Mathematica for gifted elementary school children
• From: "Ingolf Dahl" <ingolf.dahl at telia.com>
• Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:14:44 -0400 (EDT)
• Organization: University of Gothenburg
• References: <200904202310.TAA09529@smc.vnet.net>
• Reply-to: <ingolf.dahl at physics.gu.se>

Try with http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/topics.html and check what is
attracting his interest. For the really interested kid this could be a
treasure of gold. (Other kids might find it frustrating and boring to
death.) Unfortunately my own kids were too "grown-up" when this site
appeared, but there is still hope for my grandson.
I would appreciate to hear about the reaction of your son to this site.

Best regards

Ingolf Dahl
ingolf.dahl at telia.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Beliavsky [mailto:beliavsky at aol.com] 
Sent: den 21 april 2009 01:10
To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
Subject: [mg98953] [mg98863] Mathematica for gifted elementary school children

My son, almost 6, is good at math and inquisitive. Is there a math
curriculum for elementary school children that uses Mathematica? He
understands the four arithemetic operations and the concept of powers.
I have Mathematica installed on my home PC and could teach him myself.

I have written computer programs in Fortran in front of him to
demonstrate concepts such as cubes and cube roots. We had fun, but I
don't want to explain right now why 1000000000**3 gives -402653184 or
1/2 gives 0.

He is interested in the number "centillion" (10^303) and thought it
was cool to see the 101 zeros when we asked Mathematica to compute
centillion^(1/3).

I see there are some math courseware at
http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/Courseware/Mathematics/
, but those topics are too advanced for him at present. Maybe I should
give him Wolfram's huge book and let him play when he wants.

• References:
  • Mathematica for gifted elementary school children
    • From: Beliavsky <beliavsky@aol.com>