Mother of Light Weekly Review (4/25/25)

Hello everyone! A few Thursdays ago, I held an amazing last session of the year! At my station, I successfully introduced topological shapes and concepts with physical paper representations of shapes, folding and transforming them, having the kids craft and I demonstrate and help. We tested the limits of folding and saw when shapes were restrained by their flatness or curvature, and rips and tears breaking them. I showed how a flat sheet can turn into a cylinder, which can turn into a donut, but only if stretched, to make a hole, and how a circle with a sector cut out can form a cone. I showed why flat maps are distorted, and even demonstrated the properties of mobius strips, including a magical property where it remains as one piece when split in half. I intended to bring an abstract concept to real life -the shapes of donuts and ice cream cones- with physical materials; and the kids were very engaged and appeared interested. Also, my team held several other, more relaxing math stations: such as coloring images by number but calculating the numbers first, with math problems progressing in difficulty, and tangrams. The kids seemed to have fun with them. It was a big success and a great end to the year; and I have a strong, growing, and motivated base of students heading into next year.