Time-Travel Math: An Advanced Geometry Adventure

I saw an interview with the author and a review of this book in our local newspaper. It motivated me to find out more about the book. I always loved the chance of being able to combine curriculum areas. With limited teaching time, having kids explore history while learning math, science, or language arts concepts extends learning time and allows more information to be covered.

The author of the book, Amy Bernstein, is a teacher of gifted and talented programs who decided to put some of her classroom experience in book format.

The stories remind me of the Magic Tree House Series that has been popular in introducing science and history topics to children. In fact, like the Magic Tree House series, the main characters are a boy and girl who time travel. Thomas and Harriet’s interactions with historical figures will feel comfortable to children already introduced to Jack and Annie in the Magic Tree House Adventures.

This is not a traditional geometry workbook. The stories and discussions are designed to help children work towards understandings of concepts like ratio. The da Vinci story has the characters working through the math involved with ratio to help the young artist improve his drawing skills and keep his job as an apprentice. There are activities for students to do that engage and lead them in learning about ratio as well. This should be viewed as a challenging math approach for kids as it is not spelled out in a first do X then do Y format. However, children who are able to work through independent challenges would benefit by this type of approach.

Amazon does provide a limited preview of this book that allows you to see some of the stories and project pages. This is beyond their normal table of contents previews that you can access online.