Challenge Board #4: Animal Cryptarithms & The Great Wave

Previous Challenge Board: Challenge Board #3: Gardens

Fairy Storyboarding

Two challenge boards ago, fairies appeared in our fairy houses and wrote the kids encoded letters, which the kids then had to decode. Each student then wrote an encoded letter back, and we also built a more permanent house for our little tenants. Now our fairies have written a letter back, and they need the kids' help!

You can read the fairies' letter here, then read my co-conspirator's letter, mentioned in the letter.

In the letter, we learn that the fairies need help finding new fairy passages to Fairy Land, thus the "Storyboarding" challenge. We'll be photographing our fairies looking for the way home and turning it into a storyboard. And until our fairies find the way home, they are stuck using human snail mail to send letters to their friends overseas in Japan, thus the letter challenge and some of the other tie-ins to Japan. 

Of course, even if you don't have fairies visiting your classroom, you can still use these challenges without the "story" behind them. But if you do want an excuse to communicate with, say, a classroom overseas, here is how we're doing it:  My co-conspirator/writer/teacher and I have secretly purchased copies of the same small dragon figurine, so the figurine can appear to travel back and forth, but without the cost of shipping our little guest each time. For Ichigo's big arrival, my husband is going to place the figurine out while we're out of the house. 

Skelley and Buri, the skeletons who sent our fairies a letter, are on Instagram! My co-conspirator's adorable photographs are definitely an inspiration for the fairies and their letters, and I'm using these photographs to help explain storyboarding and inspire my kids.

Animal Cryptarithms

These animal cryptarithms come from Camp Logic: A Week of Logic Games and Activities for Young People (Natural Math) by Mark Saul and Sian Zelbo. Innovative math challenges like this are my other inspiration for the Challenge Boards! I've used pretty much every activity in Camp Logic for my classes in the homeschool community, and now my kids are old enough to tackle some of them themselves.

Example: W + O = O F

For each of these algebra-like problems, one letter equals one single-digit number. Letters next to each other are 2 and 3 digit numbers, so HEN would be a 3 digit number. Problems are not related, so O can equal 5 in one problem and 9 in another problem. Here's a great example of how to solve them using deduction and elimination, and you can google for more cryptarithms.

W + O = O F

Answer: A one-digit number plus a

one-digit number = two digits. The largest possible is 9+9=18, so O =1, but the two numbers you add must be different numbers because they are different letters. The answer is 9+1= 10

P+P+P=I=G+G

Answer: I must be divisible by 2 and by 3, so I=6

HH+HH=OOT 

Answer: OOT must be even because dividing by two gets you HH. Knowing that, try a few double digit numbers for HH, like 11, 22, 33, etc., and see which equal a three digit number. The three digit number must then have two digits the same, and one a different numeral. The answer is: 55=55=110

Good luck!

Paint The Great Wave

We'll be painting waves inspired by Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Japanese: 神奈川沖浪裏). We'll be following these instructions by deepspacesparkle.com, but I also think paintedpaperart's instructions look good!

To go along with our painting, we'll be reading Hokusai: The Man Who Painted a Mountain by Deborah Kogan Ray. 

We'll also watch Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave by ArtFundUK - Warning: this shows a brief clip of art with a completely bare breast (context is breastfeeding). I love how this video mentions Hokusai's influence on European painters, giving a sense of the time period and the interconnectedness of world history, while still keeping it short. 

Write & Mail a Letter

To go along with our story, I addressed an envelope as if my co-conspirator had sent us a letter, sealed it, and used a letter opener to show that the fairies had opened it. The kids are using the envelope to copy down my friend's address to send a letter back. We've sent her letters before, but this is their first time addressing the envelope themselves.

Read & Present...

For my two youngest, we are looking up the word Ichigo and translating it into languages they are interested in. My oldest is learning hiragana and writing Ichigo (いちご) will be fun practice for us both.

For my two oldest, we're researching why Japan has earthquakes and how an earthquake caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. My oldest was just sharing with me something he learned on his own, about how nuclear power is safer than coal, so this is a natural tie-in for us and a great excuse to look into it further.

Tsunami! by Kimiki Kajikawa

Meltdown! Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima

Ready for the next challenge board?

Challenge Board #5: Owls & Who Dunnits