Cake! and Pizza! Chess club! Music! Math!

Cake! Cale alone is very exciting for us, but when you add in pizza, chess club, and 3 music performances in one go, the excitement may be too much and the ship may sink. This Thursday! at 5:30, come one, come all!

So how is math homework going? Everyone forgot almost everything about math over the summer, but it's all coming back to us. Washington Park Library is the math homework capitol of Rhode Island, so come on in with your math. Even our security guard, Julio, is fond of math. Our goal is for everyone to do their math homework every day. We may have to hold a math contest by the end of the year. Plus, we've added a lot of math books that you can check out of the library and take home. If you don't have a textbook, and just have a worksheet, you definitely should think about checking out a math book that has some examples and an explanation of the kind of math problem you're working on.

It's hard to know which is better: math? cake? pizza? Math will help you more in the long run, but pizza definitely tastes much, much, better.

Back to School, part 2!

Parents!
One great way to get your kids ready for school is to make sure they're eating healthy meals that will give them energy for school. The Meals Matter website has meal planners, recipes, and nutrition information. And try BAM! Body and Mind , a very flashy, fun looking web site where kids can learn about fitness, food and nutrition, exercise, and safety by taking a quiz or playing a game.

To make school fun, incorporate learning into kids' game time. I love math, but math is NOT the most popular subject in school for most kids, so introduce them to math games and play with them. The American Library Association has a whole list of kid-friendly math sites. And check out Danica McKellar's very fun how-to math books for kids and adults. Not every parent will love this style of teaching math, but chances are their kids will.

And also look for How To Help Your Kids With Math, published by Dorling Kindersley, which we're adding to our collection right now.

See you next time!

300 Cupcakes and Why They Lead To Math

It's shocking but true!!!

Washington Park Library will be hosting the

one-time only 300 Cupcake Event! Will they be beautiful and delicious? Yes. Will poetry or stories be read while others have their mouths full of cupcake? Yes. And who is making and giving us beautiful cupcakes because they can? The fabulous people of Johnson and Wales! Thank you, beautiful bakers!

Here is what's still unknown: what do 300 cupcakes look like?

Because Muktar was working on mixed fractions, which meant we had to talk about math, we started talking about how you can check your math homework by estimating whether your answer was right. And at the same time I was so thinking about our cupcake future. So let's estimate with cupcakes and start looking at estimation.

Start with one beautiful cupcake- then imagine 2- then imagine rows of 2 by 2 by 2 by 2 by 2, rows that are 8 cupcakes across.

Then, imagine you've got those rows that have 8 across, and they're 4 of them. If you can picture the way that looks, that's 8 times 4, which is 32. Now you need almost 10 of that amount, because 10 times 32 is 320. So get rid of some rows, because your estimate is too high. But you're in the zone.

Check out the book Greater Estimations, by Bruce Goldstone- someone from ASF Broad has it right now, but it has pictures that completely explain how to use visual ideas to estimate.