The Metric System

Some of you already know that I (Doni) took a basic mathematics class at LBCC this summer, three days per week. It was great. Math had always been a blind spot for me and I thought I was just meant for grander things. As it turns out, I just needed a good instructor and text book. It was a great class and it really made me appreciate the genius of the Montessori math curriculum even more. One thing we studied in my math class was the metric system so I was eager to share some of my new-found knowledge with the kids. My dear old dad always maintained that the reason we Americans never made the switch to metric was that we tend to teach it by comparing and converting with our current system. He thought it would be better to just start "talking metric." That makes sense to me. If all of our canned goods and mileage signs were labled with grams and kilometers, I think we'd eventually get the jist.

So we've been recording the temperature in celsius when we give our weather report and today I introduced the kids to the liter. I poured the water from a liter bottle into a clear plastic box that was (nearly) the same dimensions as our largest pink tower cube. The smallest pink tower cube is one cubic centimeter, I explained, and if the largest cube was a box instead of a solid cube, I could fill it with 1000 of these smallest cubes (1 cubic centimeter=1 milliliter). I could also fill it with exactly one liter of water. I'm looking forward to showing some of the kids how to measure our Montessori materials as they can be precisely measured in centimeters being European in origin.

We also looked at some new Canadian coastal First Nations artifacts today including a lovely halibut hook made of wood and bone. We discussed how it wasn't necessary to carve a beautiful bird figure on it in order to catch fish, but that people have a need for beauty and that maybe the carving brought them powerful spirit help while fishing. Alan said, "Hey, there's a fish hook like that in that painting by the door!" He is correct, but in a million years, I would never have noticed! Thanks, Alan!