Zoe is was conscientious player, she wanted to do all the problems and do them by herself, though we did help her count the Fleur de Lys at the New Orleans style coffee shop. There were a over 600.
She designed a protective shell for an egg and dropped it from 12' high, and the egg didn't break! Then she got to throw the egg at a physics student from the local college. After that exciting event the physics students showed her the math behind her egg drop.
She was the last kid to finish, just 15 minutes before the closing of the last shop, though we also started really late. For a prize, the bakery gave her a giant brownie, a cupcake and three cookies.
Today Zoe was at Math Center for three hours. She worked on the video game she is programming in JAVA and the community project about fractional bases. She told me she was very proud because she was chosen to be one of two student teachers and teach the other kids binary.
She noted that today she was the only girl working on the community project. I pointed out that the leader of the math center is a woman. Zoe and I talked about why women are underrepresented in math professions.
She told me that she doesn't think she will succumb to peer pressure and drop her interest in math because she already stands out in her Hebrew class as one of the best students as well as the only kid who says they like learning Hebrew and she said, "I am not going to change. I don't care about fitting in or not fitting it. I just am what I am."
I hope she retains that strong sense of self when she gets to her middle school years.
what a great attitude. I forget that Zoe is technically still in elementary school- due to her high maturity level.
ReplyDeleteThat is so wonderful!
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