By Yana Mohanty
Math and children’s museums? It’s not the most expected combination. Most people associate math with numbers, and children’s museums with pretend grocery stores and whimsical climbing structures. Can math be taught via playful interactive exhibits typical of children’s museums? Those of you who are familiar with math festivals know that the answer is a resounding “Yes.” The good news is that a movement of introducing math into museums across the country is gaining momentum and may hold clues to repairing America’s relationship with math.
My experience in a math room at a children’s museum
About a year ago, the MathHappens Foundation opened a math room at the New Children’s Museum (NCM) in San Diego. MathHappens has been supplying museums and public spaces with carefully curated hands-on materials all over the US. The materials include puzzles, weight scales, 21st Century Pattern Blocks, and my brainchild, Geometiles, for construction of 3D objects. All materials are designed to be used with minimal adult involvement, to inspire ingenuity and experimentation while also providing an opportunity for problem solving. This opinion piece grew out of my involvement as a volunteer in the Math Room at the NCM, as well as my other collaborations with MathHappens Foundation.
How is this different from a math festival? Or a math museum? Or a science museum?
Most of us are familiar with the idea of a museum or amusement park membership. One of its best perks is that you can come in for short visits and focus exactly on what interests you without feeling like you are not getting your money’s worth. When there is a permanent math space in a museum, these benefits extend to doing mathematics. At NCM, I see many repeat visits to the math room from museum member families. Every time they come in, they get to choose what to engage with. They may perfect their skills (such as solving the Tower of Hanoi puzzle in fewer steps) or try something new, like constructing an Archimedean solid. The permanence of the math exhibits at a museum helps translate the excitement of a math festival into habits of mind.
Although science, math, and children’s museums share many of the same attendees, there is an important distinction. The moment a family decides to go to a math or science museum, they make a choice to spend an afternoon focused on STEM. This precludes many children from experiencing activities inside a museum based on a (possibly false) assumption that they, and/or their caregivers, are not interested in math and science. At a children’s museum, the activities span the entire gamut of physical and artistic play. The pool of children is not limited to those who wish to spend an afternoon doing math and/or science. At a children’s museum, kids make a choice to spend time in the math room because they see their peers engaged in something that looks fun. They are motivated by curiosity, which is a very powerful factor in learning.
Just the other day, a dad brought his two sons, ages 6 and 8, to NCM from nearby Orange County. He casually remarked, “we spent half our time at NCM in here [the Math Room]”. That means the boys spent at least an hour working on math challenges completely on their own initiative. I doubt that math was the reason this family made the drive to San Diego. The fact that the boys got interested in the activities speaks volumes about the impact of the math room.
Emotionally safe space
As a former lecturer, I have seen first-hand the angst that’s behind the declining math test scores that are the stuff of front-page news. I think that the first step we need to take as a society is to address people’s feelings about math. We need to create an emotionally safe space where people feel comfortable frankly sharing their (often negative) thoughts about math—spaces for “math therapy”, if you will. Children’s museums excel at creating such spaces.
Here is what one grandmother recently shared with me at the NCM: “I hated math, and geometry was my worst subject.” After probing deeper, I found that, as a student, the grandma was really perplexed by the drawings of 3-dimensional objects and had difficulty reasoning with them. When I asked her if a physical model would have helped her, the answer was an emphatic “yes.”
How eager are children’s museums to have math spaces?
I was part of the MathHappens’ booth at the ACM conference annual gathering of the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) this past April, and I heard review after beaming review about the Mathhappens materials from museum educators across the country. In fact, many museums were asking to get on the waitlist to partner with MathHappens—and MathHappens is already in over 50 locations nationwide at the time of this writing!
Another encouraging fact I learned at the ACM conference is that museum educators are often experienced crafters. This means that they have personal experience with perseverance in problem solving; after all, most crafts require some quantitative or logical reasoning to create a quality piece. Anyone who has engaged with arts and crafts, be it woodwork, knitting, or quilting, knows that sometimes things just don’t work. Either the pieces don’t fit together, or the number of stitches is off, or something doesn’t lie flat—the list of potential problems is endless. Who better to teach our children to persevere at solving problems than people who have personal experience with this skill?
Yana Mohanty is the founder of Imathgination LLC and the inventor of Geometiles®. A lifelong crafter and a math Ph.D., she has been combining her interests in math and the arts in pieces that have been exhibited at the Joint Mathematics Meetings Art Exhibition and other venues.
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