Monopoly and physical exercise

My 8 y.o. son is into monopoly game. He even made his own from scratch. A part of the game is "chance" cards - a card where you either end up paying money or getting money. He asked me to create those.

First I figured - why not make it a math problem?

"You get 400% from 50$"

Then I figured - I can make him work out!

"You get $1 for every push up"
"You get $1 for every sit up"

I never seen him working out so hard!

I too had a "misfortune" of picking a card like that. Now my whole body hurts, but I made some Monopoly money!

Exponential growth

(inspired by Len Kozhukh)

We teach our children arithmetics. If you have 5 dollars and then get another one, how much will you have?

As we stress so much on adding numbers children get used to thinking incrementally.

This is the age of exponential growth:

In technology, the processing power doubles approximately every two years

In biology, the organisms multiply exponentially

In economics, the market grows exponentially

In social networks, the information is spread exponentially

Sometimes logarithmic scale is the only visual way to compare information,

such as Richter's earthquake magnitude scale, or the diagram of observable universe (see at the bottom)

Why not teach our children exponential growth since the young age?

Games:

Race. Once car moves by 10. The other car starts moves by 1 step, then doubles its speed. See how fast the second car catches up!

Not only it is about understanding multiplication, it's also about changing the mindset:

If it takes me an hour to do the work, what would it take to spend twice as little and do the same amount of work?

Money. If I get 10% return yearly. What will I get in 10/20/30 years?

Viral distribution: what idea can I come up with that if I tell 10 of my friends, each one would tell 10 others? And how many people learn about my idea?

Who needs calculus?

While calculus is good and prestigious to know, knowing it doesn't help as much as knowing statistics. Should I buy the lotto ticket? Does this drug research make sense? Is global warming a real threat? Calculus won't help to answer these questions.

The problem is that the way math is structured at schools is to create background for calculus, not statistics. We are teaching the kids wrong skills!

Here is a very persuasive 3 minute TED talk about it:

http://www.ted.com/talks/arthur_benjamin_s_formula_for_changing_math_education.html

The games we play

Whenever I talk to my child I offer him/ her rules for a game to play.

For example:
"Did you win that chess game on a computer?"
Game: it's all about winning

"You solved this problem really fast"
Game: It's all about being smart and lucky

"You worked really hard on this problem"
Game: it's all about the effort you put in

"What did you learn today?"
Game: acquiring new knowledge

Some games will help my children when they grow up
- You really worked hard on it
The game is not about the end, but about working on a solution. The game is to enjoy the process, work hard, put effort in.

- you tried to do it even if you didn't know how
The game is to take on things you don't know how to solve, not being afraid of failing

- you were really respectful with your friend
The game is to show respect to people.


Some games will NOT help
- You must be really smart.
If the game is to be smart then the child will try to find problems that show him as smart. Who wants to deal with a challenging problem which he is not even sure he can solve? What if he fails? It would show he is not smart, and it's not the game he plays.

- You are really good at this (e.g. tennis, chess). Same thing, the child will try to find the circumstances that would have him win in his game , of being really good at something. Which means, he will take easier challenges, to handle them really well.

What games are you playing with your kids? What rules of the game do you imply by praising them?