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Find
some pages torn from old calendars.
Get
at least one page per student.
Have
children select any two-date by
two-date
(four dates) square on their calendar sheets.
Ask
them to find the sums of the diagonals. They are always identical.
Tell
the students to select any
three-by-three
squares of nine dates on their pages.
They
must find the sums of the two diagonals, the center column and the
center row.
They'll
discover that all four sums are also identical.
Children
check off any full week of
dates (Sunday
through Saturday) on their calendar sheets.
They
then find the sum of all the dates and divide that sum by Wednesday's
date.
When
each child states his or her answer orally, the group will be surprised
to learn that a common answer "seven" is shared by all.
After
working with calendar patterns,
children may
begin to see and seek out other patterns that occur everywhere in math.
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