C’s work at the office

C occasionally goes to work with Chris, especially if Chris has to work on the weekends, or on a day when few people will be at the office. This time, Chris brought home some papers that he and C had been working with.

I can’t remember all that we did, as this was a while ago, but I’ll try.

This was where we started, with me giving him an example of how to draw the triangle, with 3b 3r. He was still practicing drawing his “5”; you can see that one of them ended up looking like roller-skates or something.

Various math stuff: multiplication, squaring, spirals.

A major theme, though, was projections of geometric figures onto a plane. (This was nearly a year ago! He wasn’t even 5 yet!!)

You can see where I drew 3 projections of an icosahedron (vertex, face, and edge views). This was actually toward the end of the mathematical exploration.

The 12b, 30r is a reference to the fact that we can build an icosahedron with 12 balls and 30 rods of our magnet set.

I think this is the first one he did, the pyramid. He drew the top-down projection from memory! We did not have these magnets there with us!

C then counted up the 5b 8r, though he had trouble writing this.

This one was easy for him, 4b 4r. Again, all from memory.

This was the real challenge. He calls the octahedron a “double pyramid”. (Which is not so far from the term a mathematician would use for such shapes in general: dipyramid. Though the square dipyramid is better known as the octahedron.)

He eventually got 6b 12r, though not on his first try (as with the other ones).

For the drawings, he first just drew two pyramids next to each other. Interesting attempt, as it says something about how he thinks of the octahedron. Then he drew a vertex projection, drawing double-lines and a double-circle! I couldn’t have been more proud!

He was, too. He said, “You can draw 2 pyramids together! It’s kind of a broken one!” I think this was a reference to the projection: If you tried to flatten out an octahedron, it would be a broken one. But, as paper is flat, that’s kind of what he was doing.

THIS WAS ENTIRELY FROM MEMORY!! 4 YEARS OLD!