Playing Trig With Young Students.

This looks like a mess because what you see here is a the end of a Trig lesson but it started off with just the triangle the jet and the numbers that you see in blue the 36 degrees and the 7,000. But as we talked about it and all the different ways we could go about solving for the numbers we didn't know more and more got written down so it looks complicated. It isn't. Once concepts are understood students generally go from F to A in short order. Here is a page on trig showing one such student.

What you see are actually THREE ways to go about finding answers, using Sin, Cos and Tan depending on the angle you use what function you use to give you the side you are trying to find. 

Trigonometry is just playing with triangles
 instead of rectangles.

In fact trig is so easy that I built a page with lessons on it designed to show you how to teach trig to eight year-olds.   Yes you read that correctly. Eight. Years. Old.

In this video they are  doing trigonometry and having FUN doing it.   Here is a video showing a lesson with two students...who don't know this is supposed to be hard and that quite few students twice their age fail this pretty regularly in high schools and colleges around the nation.  If you are intimidated or lost then maybe you need to take a few steps back and check some of my other pages, but the point is any kid can do this even a grown up kid like you...and I show you how starting from step one. Here you see us AFTER we've been playing for a while because I want to show you what's possible.



Once we've played for a while and have gotten comfortable with the concepts and know when to divide and when to multiply and what function to use and the definitions of those functions the math itself is pretty easy, especially if we employ a calculator, but--and this is rather important, it's crucial to have enough "number sense" and understanding to know whether the number you got after you punched your calculator makes sense and isn't ridiculous. Sometimes you hit the wrong key...sometimes to divide when you are supposed to be multiplying and sometimes you may set the problem up incorrectly...so using a rectangle to clarify your thought at first can be quite useful.

These students are past that point. But I drew it in so you can see it applied to these problems. The students in the video already have played enough with these concepts so that these rectangles are understood. Algebra and trigonometry go hand in hand because algebra is man's greatest labor saving device. Coupled with multiplication math becomes easy to understand and learn because we aren't bogged down in computation or slowed down by basic problem solving. This way we can focus on CONCEPTS, and trigonometry becomes child's play.

Then we can ask very simple questions like how fast in the UFO flying in miles per hour and what is it's ground speed in miles per hour starting with just this much information:

A UFO takes 5 seconds to reach a height of 1 mile taking off at a 58 degree angle in a straight line. How fast is the UFO going and what is it's ground speed?

Remember I gave this problem to an eight year old. Now I will grant you that this is a "gifted" eight year old but I've taught this to other not so gifted eight year olds also, just takes a little longer which means we have to play more. So take a moment and do the math...if an eight year old can do it so can you or your teens.  But start at the beginning...it has taken us multiple lessons to get this far...this didn't happen on day one.   The same way they won't be speaking in Spanish sentences after a lesson or two in Spanish.


GET How To Teach Trig To An Eight Year Old
For a measly forty bucks I can teach you how to teach (just about) any "regular non-gifted" eight year old to do this too. No tears. No fear. Just fooling with math. If you actually buy a LIFETIME password you will find the trig page alone is pretty much worth the price of the password. Seriously.

And with a lifetime pass you not only get "How To Teach Trig To An Eight Year Old" you also get The Trig Page and a bunch of other pages that make teaching and learning math EZ too.  How To Teach Trig To An Eight Year Olds is a "stand alone page" that comes with some added bonuses that you get with a full blown password and it also comes with some pdfs to get you going. So if you Don't have 350.00 bucks for a password or want to pay 37 bucks a month for 10 months and just want help with Trig just pay 40 bucks once and you are into that page for life.  No expiration. And I think you will see that for 40 bucks you get a whole lot more than you are used to getting for 40 bucks.

What I have found over the years is that a lot of kids that come to me for trig help don't know basic algebra concepts and don't even have their multiplication tables down pat.  Of course they are having trouble with Trigonometry and are confused. Couple with that with text books and their proclivity for starting in the middles and expecting you to have some serious perquisites under your belt and you end up with a lot of anxiety confusing and failing grades. You need to be able to identify a rectangle count to nine and tell if something is same or different or not to get started with me.

There is no need for fear or failing grades. Forty bucks will make all the difference. Don't believe me though, no brochure makes the hotel look bad.   Go read what some other people have got to say. Skip Starbucks 8 times and you can change your kid's life forever.

Click on the links to the trig pages and you will find FREE lessons there.

Algebra with Base Ten Blocks For A 6 Year Old.

 Your kids could be doing this.  Just get a password. 
 
From an email I got:

 "Made much more "math" sense since I had paid $50 for the 2 previous years. 

 And when you announced that your price was going up for the lifetime membership, it was an easy decision. Thanks for doing what you do. My 6 year old is now working on division since yesterday and it was so easy for him. We worked on division facts from 100 down and he only missed a handful. Not bad for his first day. But of course, working on multiplication for the last 6 months made it a whole lot easier. 

When we were done, he said "division is not that hard, why do they wait to teach it in 4th grade?" (He has a fourth grade cousin.)

I'm sending you a link of me and my son factoring Tri-nomials if you get a chance to glance at it. Nothing grand, especially since you have seen it thousands of times with other 6 year olds.



"I am really appreciating your website and all those YouTube videos. I needed to get a firm grasp on so many concepts and how they are related, never mind how to then go about teaching it. I feel that this is the first real opportunity for me to actually really understand what I was taught all those years ago. All that 'stuff' that I had no idea what they were talking about, clueless as to the why too, and so also promptly forgot pretty much everything.

Thank you for all your time, energy and effort!
Sincerely,

JP, UK"

Well I have good news and I have bad news. The good news.

Sale will be happening on Friday 27 Nov 2015.

Lots of Items on sale.

I will have passwords on sale. I will have gift certificates for training on sale. I will include a training with some kits...and of course 10 pay options.

Now the bad news: prices are going up...just a few bucks here and there; but pretty much all plastic is going up...like a DCSK will be $551.25 instead of $525.00 mostly reflecting shipping costs.

Combo kits will be 95 bucks instead of 88.75...etc...but during the sale they will be less...and as you notice we haven't had a sale since June and depending on how this one goes it will be quite a while until the next one...whether this goes well or not.

Might want to tell your friends to get on it NOW.

Base Ten Block Sample Lesson.

Math is fun when you use base ten blocks. Here is a young girl who isn't so very keen on math, she'd rather be playing with her bows and across or her sword but playing with nines and building walls can be fun too.   Measuring out how many nines in 27 turn out to be pretty easy.

Building walls of 24 can also be fun...here she sees quite clearly four sixes and six fours are the same also three eights and eight threes....and of course we counted by 3's, 4's, 6's and 8's...and we see counting by eights is the fastest...no need for worksheets. No muss no fuss. We talk about it she hears it she sees it.

She gets a math experience using base ten blocks that evolves more than just paper and pencil and memorization. She can get her hands on it.  She is in a math rich environment.   Everything we do is math during this lesson and counting.  Here we are doing multiplication and division and skip counting. It's visually obvious that the bigger the number is the fewer we need to count to 24...we see a relationship between numbers. Six 4's is the same four 6's...which is pretty cool when you are six.  But lets not get stuck doing the same thing over and over again...let's do something else.

Remove the no from the lesson.

So lets make some puzzles.  Build me x² + 7x + 12...and then count the sides...basically here the algebra is just along for the ride mostly we are cementing in the addends and doing some multiplication facts. Then we also see x² + 8x + 16 is (x+4)² which is just a shorter way to write (x+4)(x+4)...this also gives us a better understanding of just plain ol' x²...

10 to 15 Minutes per Topic.

Factoring is fun and easy. And it builds confidence because every kids knows algebra is supposed to be hard. So if they can do it with ease they must be just as smart as grandma says they are.

That moment when you see the answer.

 Keeping it small and easy makes it fun but there is plenty of math going on here none the less. Dividing by two, squaring a number, addends, multiplication she gets exposed to all of it in one simple problem.  If you put the child in a situation where they can not fail and feel like they are making their own discoveries rather than you just telling them math facts and practicing with drills and memorization you will find lower stress and more fun which leads to more learning and happy memories and associations.   Or you can bust out your work sheets.., and see how much fun that isn't.

It is a very simple concept, the making of positive associations with the mathematics instead of negatives ones. It should be pretty clear from the pictures that she is having a good time.  If you have doubts listen to her excitement in the video.

Once you get the thing factored counting is the easy part. While she is building it fine motor skills are being developed. Also recognition of spatial relationships...

Algebra is fun and easy.

Factoring Polynomials is Child's play.

Here is a picture that's fun because we are seeing quite clearly that 3 sixes and six 3's is the same thing. We made a purple sponge cake with pink frosting and as we frosted the cake we counted by threes.  We put them on top of each other and counted the sides...

Multiplication doesn't have to be drudgery, if you do it right the child see's that actually it's a time saver and learning to multiply makes life easier not harder because it allows us to count quickly which allows us to do more math with less pain. Discovering constancy of numbers is fun when you are six.

It's these little repeated exposures using base ten blocks that over time add up to a deeper understanding of how math fits together.

So here is a sample for you, showing us "jumping around" from topic to topic. The topic is math. so we are just playing math...we start off counting 11's...and then fool around with multiplication concepts...then we solved for x playing what's under the cup, told some stories...did some thinking...then we factored some polynomials and we were done...moved along in lively fashion didn't get bored doing the same thing over and over again even though we were doing the same thing over and over again...which is math...

Not just Theory.  Theory in Practice.  
I have HUNDREDS of FREE videos that show you how.

I don't want to tutor your kids I want you to tutor your kids. Play math and have fun. Spend quality time with your kids and learn together. This method will transform your math time into something your kids look forward to instead of dread. But don't take my word for it, here are testimonials, you can see many others have found that this is a better way to go. All you have to do is dive in.  Christmas is coming and it will be a great time to get some blocks and GET STARTED.  Get a set of blocks and a password and you are good to go.