Christmas 2007

Thy nativity, O Christ our God
Has shone a light of knowledge upon the world
For by it, those who worshiped the stars
Were taught by a star to adore Thee, the Sun of Righteousness
And to know Thee, the Orient from on high
O Lord Glory to Thee.

-- A hymn sung in Orthodox Churches at Christmas.

Comments

Post a comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: Totto-chan - A book for every educator

Image
Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window Author: Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Translator: Dorothy Britton. Publisher: Kodansha International, 1996. ISBN: 4-7700-2067-8 This book was given me as a gift by my sister-in-law, an educator and avid reader. It is the autobiography of a famous actress and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. The book concentrates on a short period of time when the author attended Tomoe primary school in Tokyo. In fact, the book is more a description of the school founder's practice than it is a life story. Expelled from first grade! The book starts by telling of Totto-chan's expelling from her previous school, when she was only in grade one. You see, "the little girl at the window" would wait all morning for street bands to walk by the school and call them over to play their music. This was seen as highly disruptive behaviour and, exasperated, her teacher decided the girl did not become at the school. Eventually, her mother found a school th
Read more

Make up four: a puzzle

A colleague gave me this puzzle yesterday. It is very cool. Rearrange the sticks on the left hand side of the equal sign, so the sum does equal 4. | + || + ||| = 4 Note: The plus signs are also made up of sticks. Post your answers in the comments field. Elias. Technorati tags: Technorati tags: Puzzle Mathematics
Read more

Should kids learn times tables?

Image
Knowing that I teach year seven mathematics, people often ask me my opinion on whether kids should learn their times tables (or multiplication tables if you prefer). In this post, I argue that times tables should be learned at some stage of the child's education, but only as part of many ideas related to multiplication. (c) Can Stock Photo Firstly, multiplication tables should not be learned too early. My kids' primary school holds off till kids reach grade 3. A kid who "knows the answer" to 3x8 will not feel the need to group objects in threes or in eights and will miss discovering a few things about multiplication:
Read more