Shoal Creek Living History Museum
Did you know that puzzles strengthen your brain? Children should start doing simple jigsaw puzzles as young as 18 months, if not younger. Start with wooden cut-out puzzles then graduate to cardboard jigsaws with increasing difficulty as the child ages.
The next step in the puzzle progression would be simple pencil word puzzles. For elementary school ages, the Highlights magazine is a good start, but there are also many other makers of children’s word puzzles.
In teenage and adult years, there are all kinds of pencil puzzle books from makers like Dell and Penny Press. The author’s favorite word puzzles are Cryptograms, Flower Power, Cryptic Crosswords (British version), math Story Problems, and anything that requires some sort of deductive reasoning. Her all-time favorites are Math and Logic puzzles, including Word Math (long division in letters), Kakuro (a.k.a. Cross Sums or Sum Totals), Sudoku (a.k.a. Number Place), Sumdoku (marriage of Kakuro and Sudoku), and Figure Logics, to name a few.
Puzzles create new neuron pathways and keep the mind sharp. They improve reasoning ability and help children optimize their math and reading skills. They keep adults sharp and fend off senility. They help develop the ever-so-important spatial and timing abilities that are important precursors to math understanding. They help children (and adults) see patterns in language and numbers, which skill spills over into other areas of their lives.
Puzzles help children learn to think abstractly, which gives them the ability to be better problem-solvers in life as well as in school. It has been proven that the maths and sciences help people learn to think and see alternate possibilities. So the next time your teenager says, “Why do I have to take algebra?! I’ll never use it,” tell her that she needs algebra in order to think better in general. Tell her to look at algebra as a fun puzzle, too.
Just as a side note, you can use algebra on your shopping list to make your total come out exactly, so you do use algebra later it life! For instance, if you only have $100.00 to spend and tax is 6.25%, how much can you spend so that the amount plus the tax on that amount add up to exactly $100.00?
It is algebra – say that one “y” is the amount to spend before taxes, and that the tax would be “0.0625 times y” then your equation would be:
y + 0.0625y = 100.00.
Do the puzzle: y(1 + 0.0625) = 100.00, or
1.0625y = 100.00.
Remember that algebra solves like fractions, so
y = 100.00/1.0625 (The slash line means divide).
Then y = 94.12 and the tax (94.12 x 0.0625) on that amount = 5.88, so
$94.12 + $5.88 = $100.00. The maximum you can spend before taxes is $94.12.
You can do this with any dollar amount and any tax rate. It’s a great way to keep a tight allowance within budget!
This week we are focusing on historical activities. A really fun living museum in the Kansas City area is the Shoal Creek Living History Museum, where the 1800s come to life here. Open daily by appointment. Check it out at http://www.kcmo.org/parks.nsf/web/shoal Some activities are the Harvest Festival Saturday, Oct. 10th: Join them for an old fashioned County Fair. And the Wilderness Run on Saturday, Nov. 7th: Runners will run through the village, around fields, up and down hills, over logs, through the woods, crossing creeks and more!
Located at: 7000 NE Barry Rd. Kansas City, MO 64156. PHONE: 816-792-2655. Price: Admission free. Hours: Please call for verification.
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