Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Math, patterns & mazes...

Kumon has a good book for 3-5 year olds with just maze after maze, they get progressively harder but always with nice pictures of dragons or bugs. My ds really enjoyed that one around age 3.
Since about 6 he has started drawing these sort of star patterns, I am not sure what else to call them. They are a loose matrix of points or small circles with radiating lines coming from each point to connect to other points. They end up looking like complicated nets or something - they always make me think of stars in space or a map. I think they are really cool; these are some of the things that keep me coming back to the idea of him as a 'mathy' guy...
I have not noticed any great maze books out there for older kids, we might have to check out the book of kells, or mandalas, those are great ideas!

Like this?

http://www.physics.sjsu.edu/becker/physics51/images/28_09_Magnetic_filed_lines.jpg

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/t_tauri_star_study.jpg

My DS5 fell in love with mazes around 3.5 years old. The thing that confuses me is that he had NO issues whatsoever with mazes but when you have him sit down and try to do one of those "where's waldo" books, he had the hardest time due to some vision tracking issues. He wouid solve a maze in lightning speed and then began to make his own detailed mazes - again, really poor fine motor coordination but when he wanted to make a maze he really focused hard. He also was fascinated with the body mechanics of what happened to food and how it went through your system and anything he could learn about the body - then it moved onto wanting to learn how systems worked - how did the toilet work and where did it go....

Very interesting this morning. Today is library day and DS wants to bring the school map with him so that when it's time to line up to go to the library, he can follow along with his map. Another maze...

We found a local corn field maze for this fall... heck... I'm excited to go!

JB

Yes Austin, a bit like those!..that may be where my impression of stars is coming from.

But also they are a bit like a bucky-ball opened up and laid out flat, more mechanical. Anyhow, I think they are cool .

JBDad, we are considering some fall mazes around here, too. There is a good hay bale one nearby we are probably going to check out.

Hi. You may also let your son try beestar.org�s gifted talented math which is suitable for kids clever at math. Beestar is a web site, good at primary math and reading. My daughter is doing math exercises on beestar. She enjoins it very much.
Lisa