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For fun and easy math!
I kept making a certain typo in the word "matchbox" until I decided it must be a sign. So, I created a MATHbox swap.
But then I started to think... What if there are people out there who would be scared of too much math? People who maybe have been scared of any kind of math they have ever met... and maybe it is just that they haven't met the right math! After all, as my own mother told me when I was just a little girl and complained that math is so dull, school math IS dull. But now we are all grown-ups, most of us out of school - time to get over this childhood fear, or maybe even find out there was a kind of math you have always loved without even knowing it was math...
What do you need to do for this swap? It all grows logically from the swap name:
- take a box
- decorate it and fill with fun math
Now, to be a bit more detailed...
- I want each of us, for this swap, to save a small box from trash. So, unless you are a chemistry teacher and have huge amounts of empty matchboxes, don't use one of them, and also don't make one yourself. You can take a box that used to contain pills, condoms, staples, embroidery thread, mints, cheese, chocolate, cookies... - anything, as long as it a small clean cardboard box that you'd throw away if it wasn't for this swap.
Let the box be no smaller than a 32ct matchbox, but small enough to fit into a 10x15cm (4x6in) bubble envelope - except if you want to use a box that has some other shape than the usual rectangular box shape - but still a mathematical one, of course. Decorate it on some mathematical theme (so nobody will know what you had in there). Don't forget that there's more to math than numbers (hint: polka dots are circles, stripes are parallel lines)...
- What is fun math?
There are things that you maybe have never thought to have a connection to math. A round button with stripes on it? - it is a circle with chords dividing it into segments - very mathematical! Beads that are all round (spheres) or long ones (cylinders), inchies (squares) and ATCs (rectangles)... Unsharpened pencils are prisms or cylinders, and when they are sharpened, then they are prisms or cylinders with a cone on one end. :) And I won't even start on ribbons - I swear I have read about a way of building up all geometry from ribbons (what is a rectangle? - two ribbons crossing each other at right angle), I just can't find the source right now.
Also, there are any kind of math-related jokes; funny, fake or just interesting math problems; math puzzles - logic problems, sudokus of all kinds, KenKen, Slither link, nonograms, light up, Hashiwokakero (bridges), Shikaku (rectangles), Nurikabe (Islands in the Stream), Dominosa, mazes, Kakuro, fill-in-crosswords, etc etc etc. Let's make a rule though - only the really easy ones! We want to overcome, not deepen complexes, don't we? No sudokus bigger than 6x6! And the same about the other kind of puzzles - only the simplest ones! Maybe, if you and/or your partner is deathly scared of numbers, you can remake a sudoku using different stickers instead of numbers (tiny Sandylion stickers usually have three modules per sheet, and if you get two of them or such one that has an extra sheet for free, you can already create 6x6 sudokus - you guessed it, I have done such for my kids).
You can cut problems out of magazines or books, copy/remake from them (giving credit where due), or even create the jokes/problems/puzzles yourself. Don't stuff your box with only one kind of things - let there be at least four kinds of fun math in the box, and let there be at least one math of a puzzle type - not only buttons and beads.
If you have any questions about whether this or that counts as math (although, I'm afraid, it is pretty difficult to find something that has no connection whatsoever), feel free to ask me!
This swap is open to swappers with at least a 4.9 rating, no unexplained 1s and 3s, and at least three ratings for snail-mail swaps. I also reserve the right to ban as I deem necessary.
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