Connections to Numeracy

Abstract

Volume of rectangular prisms extended into an interesting scaling problem: One child asked if they could try to build a Soma cube as large as the teacher’s demonstration Soma cube (made with very large individual cubes) using the smaller Soma figures. Initially they built four Soma cubes using the small sets of Soma figures and arranged them to look like a very large Soma figure #2. They eagerly attacked the problem of how many little individual cubes were in this figure each showing at least two ways to find the answer. The following week they built a huge cube using 27 smaller sets of Soma cubes and calculated 27 × 27 to find how many little individual cubes were in this model. Permutations within cake patterns: At the end of each year, the children were challenged to create a “cake” with the seven Soma figures. The cake had to have 24 cubes for a base and three “candles” on the second level. They created several 3 × 8 and 4 × 6 cakes and drew the top plan view coding patterns for these to submit to the baker. We share how children from three different cohorts discovered the permutations of each cake design from the three or four Soma figures (#1, #5, #6, and #7) that have the same 3-cube footprint.