Learning about Pythagoras

In our study of ancient Greece last month in homeschool, the twins (almost 6 years old) learned about Pythagoras and his followers (the Pythagoreans).  Here are some of the activities we did (many were from the book Classical Kids: An Activity Guide to Life in Ancient Greece and Rome by Laurie Carlson.  Here's a bit of what we did..

We explored the Pythagorean theorem, of course, by drawing 3/4/5 right triangles and using tiles to see if the square of the sides equals the square of the hypotenuse.  E danced around the room shouting "Pythagoras was right!" when she added up the tiles and saw they were equal.

The kids also explored triangular numbers, which are numbers that can form an equilateral triangle (believed to have originated with the Pythagoreans).  They tried predicting the next number in the pattern, and this turned out to be a good reinforcement of addition skills as well.

The kids stayed up late coloring and assembling polyhedrons (Platonic solids).  This was a great lesson in geometry and also good practice for fine-motor skills.

Traditional first grade math can be boring (a lot of addition/subtraction drills), so this was a lovely chance to introduce the kids to more interesting math concepts and explorations.  It was fun to integrate it with our history unit on ancient Greece, and we'll definitely be doing more projects like this in the future.