Cat's Cradle

After the math test I taught the kids how to play Cat’s Cradle. Their minds were appropriately, and adorably, blown.

I’ve been weed-whacking my way through Freire’s Pedagogy of Freedom bit by bit. It occurred to me that the impromptu Cat’s Cradle workshop, although it had absolutely no relevance to any TC curriculum calendar or Everyday Mathematics Teacher’s Guide I’d ever been handed, was totally awesome. And, compared to the test prep unit, perhaps slightly closer to what Freire intends in his utopian educative dream… rather than force-feeding the kids “steps” to solving particular math problems, or shoving the prime numbers song (musical masterpiece or not) down their throats, I was simply creating conditions in which they could learn.. nudging them to become aware of new possibilities… hey kids, look what you can do with a piece of string!
And they were off… teaching each other, learning from each other, and inventing their own variations. All 28 kids totally absorbed in the joy and wonder of discovering something they never before knew how to do.

Who knew Cat’s Cradle is the answer to all of public education’s shortcomings…