Magicats – Witches cats
12 October 2024
Magicats – Why do witches have cats? The popular image of a witch wearing a
Here at AQUILA HQ we’re passionate about learning being a lifelong pursuit and we truly believe that, however young or old you are, if things are fun then then learning will just happen! However, we also know that certain areas of learning can cause anxiety. Take maths for example, just the word can bring many people out in a cold sweat! But did you know that in our every day lives we’re taking on maths without even knowing it?
Is your child a fantastic football fan? Then let’s use their love of it to explore maths! On first look you may think they’re worlds apart, but they really aren’t!
Here are our top four hacks to bring out the MATHS MAGIC in football lovers!
For all football lovers, taking part in something like a Fantasy Football league is a great way to nail some numeracy skills. In fact, the 2019/20 Fantasy Football league season was actually won by an Oxford University mathematician! If it’s too late in the season to join an official league then why not take a dive into the world of STATISTICS on the Premier League website?
Together with your child, choose a team and look at how they are doing in the league table. What patterns can you see? Can you estimate how many goals the team may have at the end of the season based on how many they have right now? Is the team better at attacking or defending? How can you tell?
Set your child a keepy-uppy challenge. Get them to practice keepy-uppies each day for a month and record their results. What can they see from the first day they tried to the last day? Has their performance improved over the month? Can you help them work out what percentage improvement they have had. Did they have any drops in performance? Ask them why they think this could be. They may even want to create some graphics to show their performance over the month!
Take a football to the local park goals and take it turns to kick the football at the cross-bar of the goal. Get your child to discuss their performance each time. If the ball is way off the target on the first couple of kicks ask them what they think they need to do to make their aim more accurate. This is geometry in action, calculating angles and trajectories!
If you have a football fanatic at home it probably means you have lots of football balls too! Get them to grab one as it’s a great way to introduce them to TOPOLOGY; ask your child to identify different features of the football such as the surface, seams, and the shape. Ask them if the overall shape is actually made up of other shapes? If so, what are they? Can the count how many of each shape the ball is made up of? Get your child to press down on the ball. Show them that the balls surface remains continuous even if it has changed shape.
After exploring the football could they look at other objects around the house and see how they are the same or different?
If you found these top tips useful, then explore our other blogs for more of AQUILA’s maths hacks!
Words: Benita Estevez
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