Combines math with fun

Metamo4ic Math Center in Ferguson

Kids attending the new math center in Ferguson learn how to figure mean and median numbers in a very unusual way. They use a bowling ball and pins.

That's an example of Ms. Vicki Adams' approach to teaching math.

"We expose the kids to math principles but make finding the answers fun," the former elementary school teacher said.

"And we don't give the kids all the pieces to the problems. We make them think rather than just memorize the answers given to them," Ms. Adams said.

The Metamo4ic Math Center opened in September. Her new non-profit organization uses four large rooms in the First Baptist Church of Ferguson. The rooms are filled with interactive math displays.

Herbert Daniel

Eleven-year-old Herbert Daniel and his mother, Carla Daniel, were among a group of home-schooled kids and parents who attended last month. The 6th grader from North St. Louis admitted that math wasn't his favorite class right now.

That's because he's having problems with triple-digit multiplication. "I'm not that good at it right now but I'm getting better,"

Seven-year-old Alison Capps of Florissant also was in the home-schooled group. She was accompanied by her mother, Cindy Capps.

Alison Capps

Alison's goal for her math study is simple: "I want to be really smart when I grow up."

Ms. Adams' approach to teaching math involves having kids and their parents work together to figure out a wide variety of math problems. They learn the math principles while working through the exercises.

(To learn more about The Metamo4ic Math Center, visit its website at www.metamo4icmathcenter.com. To reserve times, call (314) 807-3290.

(The fee for a 2-hour session is $3 per person, $4 for 3-hours and $5 for 4- or more hours. There are discounts for groups of 10 or more.)

Ms. Adams dips into many different fields to find examples that explain math principles.

For instance, she has a number of projects grouped under the title, "The DaVinci Mode."

Leonardo DaVinci was a famous Italian artist. He's known mostly for his paintings, including the "Mona Lisa." But he was much more, including an engineer and a scientist.

Those other occupations deal a lot with math. DaVinci used mathematics during the planning of some of his most famous paintings, including "The Last Supper."

One of the DaVinci Mode exercises Ms. Adams uses involves putting a grid of small squares over the face in a painting. That way, the kids can draw one piece of the face at a time. It makes it easier to complete the whole drawing one section at a time.

Alison Capps and mother work with foot displays

One of the other exercises Alison Capps and her mother used involved a study of measurement with the aid of outlines of two huge human feet.

In teaching kids how to recognize large numbers, Ms. Adams has wall displays with hooks and commas between every three hooks. The kids hang up boards with a single number on each.

Then, they hang up 12 numbers in a row. After standing back, they can see what numbers in the billions look like. (A sample: 856,712,357,990)

Bowling pins that teach math

The bowling display is an example of teaching more complex math principles.

First the kids form teams and bowl several games. They mark their scores on a wall chart. Afterward, the kids add up their scores. Then they figure out the mean, the median, the mode and the range of the scores.

They even get to see the work of some famous mathematicians from the past. For instance, one display is of a Pascal's Triangle. Blaisé Pascal was a French mathematician who designed several ways to show the relationship of numbers to each other.

Ms. Adams' Pascal's Triangle is a series of hexagons stacked into a triangle shape. Each hexagon has a number. When you add two or more numbers together, the sum of those numbers is always listed in an adjacent hexagon.

Math Town

The displays show a great variety of difficulty. But, that's on purpose.

Ms. Adams said it's not easy to determine how much difficulty each kid can take.

She said, "When I was teaching at Orchard Farm, I had a 1st grader who was learning 5th grade math. And he couldn't get enough of it."

So, she has fun activities to teach kids math, regardless of their age or current talent.