We started out with Math Art In Ancient Cultures. We learned about the Ancient Babylonians, Ancient Greece, Ancient India, Morocco, and the Mayans. As you work through the lessons you have have a study guide and power point. There is a video with the teacher that goes through the power point as well as touches bases on some important things. The video that you are seeing is of a previous live class that was recorded earlier. There are interactive resources for you to continue to learn. There are projects, and links to more reading, and videos to learn more about the topic at hand. It gives you a visual as to how art is tied into history, nature, and science.

How We Used This: 

My son and I worked on this during our Math class four days a week. As I mentioned above we started out with Math Art In Ancient Cultures. We started out learning about Ancient Babylonians. It was rather interesting the interactive piece that we were able to learn more then just the math of it. We learned about the architecture and how that applied to the Plimpton 322. Then it would take you and show you were these angles were used. It also talked about the ancient gods as well as some of the sculptures or statues. So you weren’t just learning about math, but about a combination of different things. The one that was intriguing was the music of that time period. We talked about the different sounds of the music and the different moods.

We moved at a way slower pace then we should have through these lessons. The math was way above his head and trying to do some of the projects for us was a fail. So we did read the resources in the extras and watched the videos. There were topics from the lesson itself that we spent some extra time on. For example the hanging gardens was one and the different ancient gods were another.

Last week to change things up for him I switched to Math Connections with the Real World. We learned about the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci numbers. It was very interesting to be able to see that we can see these in nature. It took me a bit to figure out how they were getting the fibonacci numbers. I even found some extra videos for us to watch about them, they explained it a lot more into detail and you could get a really good visual. We started to do one of the projects where you measure certain distances not the body but I think towards the end with the golden ration we got a little confused. This was the first one that we could try. We went a step further and went out doors to see what we could find that had the fibonacci numbers in it. It is winter here so we don’t have any flowers to see, but we did find pine cones and we did try our best to figure out the spirals. I noticed as we were working in this section it referred to things from the other course such as platonic shapes. So these were things you could recall and incorporate. He could recall that he learned about it.

My Overall Thoughts: 

I thought that the two classes we explored were a little above our heads. We had an easier time with the Math Connections with the Real World then we did with the Math In Ancient Cultures. I would have liked to see maybe a little more explanation as to the math behind it with examples and explanations so that maybe we could have actually done some of the math problems. That really is my only complaint. I found these course to be unique though as it really opened your eyes to just how much math is used around you and even in history. It’s amazing just how much we still use today from the Ancient World. Maybe that was more of the point then trying to figure things out mathematically. We still have the other two classes to explore as well and by the topics I think they maybe a better fit for us.

I do want to point out something that I did really like. Each lesson has a printable on the power point and study guide. I did like that you could print both. I didn’t print the study guide because you could view that before the lesson videos. I did like the fact that you could find the answers with in the power point. You could use the study guide to study for the quiz or test. You  can hang on to this as a reference in case the topic does come up in other classes. You have something to look back on.

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