How are your visual-spatial skills? Can you perform rotations in your mind? Can you recognize the angle from which a picture has been taken? This puzzle Sunday takes you to a program that is designed to create three dimensional programs.
Another program -I don't know if this one will do, Chris... I hope so.
Today I was strolling in the windy polders. The polders in the Netherlands (picture is an example) are land won over the sea more than a century ago, at the cost of lives. My son believes that the climate will cause the sea level to rise, I am not so sure it will rise more than the 10 to 20 centimeter every ten years or so, the same as always, with fluctuations. The wind is very cold and the sheep are coming towards us, as if they expect something from us. Then one sheep turns around. The other sheep watch her and one after the other turn around and walk away.
It is no weather for sheep in the wet clay, it is time for children to do puzzles: visit Jurassic Park? And to read books, books and books...
Difficult puzzles need a strategy to be able to solve them. Smart children just try solving them, trusting their solving skills rather than a strategy. This works until they face a puzzle that seems not to work in that way. Then they have to try something called multilayered strategy. This is exactly the aim of scaffolding, getting insight in structure of solution, rather than being able to just solve the puzzle without having to worry how they did it.
In the midst of this comes emotions that are new to smart children: failure, frustration, stress... These emotions are often successfully avoided because smart children often can solve problems easily. When the puzzle is difficult enough, they get the chance to experience these emotions. A good teacher knows that emotions are a part of education. It is good to reflect on the emotions. What happened? How did you feel?
Then the child has to finish the task anyway. This means perseverance. The more perseverance, the better the child will feel when it does succeed to solve the problem in the end.
When they succeeded to solve the difficult puzzle, accompanied with the necessary frustration, the next step is to teach the child to automatize the puzzle.
How is a puzzle like the elephant puzzle used to scaffold? (in education, but you can do it among friends too) Well, for one the trick is that you don't need to know how to solve every independent puzzle (exceptions disregarded) to know how to solve a puzzle. For some puzzles, understanding laws is necessary or useful. How switches can be written down as either on or off may be helpful for solving a binary puzzle. Also, the idea of how to list numbers may be important. 00001 comes before 00010 and after 00000.
In the list 00, 01, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111 notice that the last digit changes every time from 0 to 1, before the left digit can change. This also is the case with the elephant puzzle.
This is how a puzzle gives deep insight of maths and logic. Deep because it is a direct experience. It makes a connection between a concept in your head and a visual tactile experience in your hands.
I love thinking puzzles and my children do to. Here are some of the ones we enjoyed.
Elefant spinout is great for automatisation. This is a process wherein the solution is not only mastered by solving the puzzle, but by making it route. This is very important for some children that tend to find a solution easily and try to avoid route. Also this puzzle is a good model for binary maths. The elefants have two positions while solving the puzzle, 0 and 1, or facing the exit or to the side.
A few weeks ago I gave you this difficult puzzle: what does the equation U = E x V / I x D signify? hint: (probably Social) Psychology.
I gave a hint: E is for Expectation of success
Another hint is that V is the value of completion of a task
Who finds out what is the answer gets on top of my blogroll.
Is there a publisher that can help a woman, mother and 90% nerd (nerd test, I know, it does not count) to publish a book on a subject that might benefit mothers of potentially smart children? It's been 42 years of doubt whether I should consider myself a language person or a science person, and I'm still multilingual... Help!
Multilingual friends are: deaf friends, minorities, highest educated, lowest educated, authors of the books in my cupboard, technicians (speak the language of technic, mathemathics), mathematicians (speaking in equations), you, my reader. (being cited last is actually an honor)
Puzzle: what does the equation U = E x V / I x D signify? hint: (probably Social) Psychology.
Still no rejection. I read the first page of "everything is illuminated" by Foer, just before giving it to Y. for his birthday. (and then had to buy a copy for myself) Y. is the son of my friend and is the fastest player of Set I know of. He has a very high IQ, and I try to challenge him. I buy wooden puzzles and the question is how long it will take him to solve it. My sons are younger and follow in his footsteps. They like to do puzzles. I mean, thinking puzzles that you might find at www.denkspellen.nl or games like Tamsk ( by Burms). Abstract games and puzzles. He is very good at abstract games, but foreign language he fears. So I gave him "everything is illuminated" and said every page is a (verbal) puzzle.
