MathArt Online (A REVIEW)

We had the opportunity to try out a really unique homeschooling curriculum/resource that combines Art and Math in real life. NatureGlo's eScience has four classes that inspire the learner to dig deeper and look at math in a different way through videos, slides, and projects. For this review we focused on the Math Connections with the Real World 6-week Online Class which is included in the MathArt Online 4-Class Bundle that we received. Although, I am excited to get to the other 3 classes after this one!

All of the MathArt courses are online courses where you have the choice to watch pre-recorded videos that show all the slides with narration by Gloria (the teacher), and/or you can download all the slides if you just want to go through them on your own. I liked having the ability to do either of those options. It was nice to hear the teachers comments along with the slides if we had time for the videos. If we didn't have time for the videos we could just review the slides. After the slides/videos there are quizzes, and projects. Lots and lots of great project ideas. They included things like watching extra YouTube videos, other blogger ideas for art or baking projects, informational websites with more information, lapbooks and printougs, and much much more. We tried a few of the projects, and even came up with some of our own! I will get to those in a little bit.

The flow of the courses is very nice. The 6 lessons are laid out in order, and as the student moves through each part of the lesson they mark it complete for a visual of how much they have completed. They also earn a badge for each lesson they complete. Each lesson is supposed to take about a week to finish which makes it a 6-week course with 6 total lessons. There are several components to each lesson and can be completed at the students own pace. Rather than having one student complete the course, we used it as a family course adjusting for the different ages. There were so many great projects that I found something for everyone. Although the lessons and slides are really geared for older elementary, middle school and up.

Projects

There were many great MathArt projects we wanted to do. I wanted to do all of them, but some were quite time consuming, so we had to be careful what we chose with the time we had. These projects are very critical in making the math connections with the real world, and kind of bring the lessons/slides to life.

There were several lesson plans to print out for projects and one of the lesson plans we did was an introduction to Fibonacci numbers for 4th graders, and one of the projects to go with that lesson plan was to practice making a golden rectangle or Fibonacci rectangle using graph paper. I also used this to help them get ready for making golden rectangle sugar cookies which is the next project.

Even my 1st grader totally got this. Here he is making his golden rectangle on graph paper.

His completed golden rectangle complete with spiral.

1st grader Golden Rectangle

My son was inspired to do his golden rectangle on Minecraft. He was pretty excited, and I loved that he could do it in a way that gets him excited about it.

Minecraft Golden Rectangle by Aaron (6th grade)

Next we were on to the sugar cookie golden rectangle project suggested in lesson 3. The idea for this project is from a blog called Almost Unschoolers, and gives great instructions on how to make a cookie golden rectangle. It is also suggested to read this book too, Blockhead, The Life of Fibonacci. I love having book tie ins!

We started out by mixing up our cookie dough.

And separating it into 6 bowls with 6 different colors. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the portions. Of course the portions will be separated into different sizes according to which part of the golden rectangle it will make.

This is where we went wrong. We made everything too big, and our rectangles look more like squares. It was kind of a flop, but size does matter! I want to go back and do it over again. Also, my son added way too much food coloring. We had a little lesson on how a little food coloring can go a long way. His hands were blue for a few days! It was a fun experience though. We didn't even bother doing the spiral since it wasn't the right shape, but we should have also used some melted chocolate to make a spiral.

The other classes included in the bundle include MathArt in Ancient Cultures, MathArt in the Arts and Sciences, and MathArt--Patterns in Nature. All of these courses are set up in the same way with 6-weeks of lessons, and many projects. Also, I forgot to mention that at the beginning of each lesson is a workbook study guide to download. It has fill-in the blank questions for the slides, journal entries, quizzes, and an answer key. I printed it up and we filled it in as we watched through the slides.

An example of one of the pages from the study guide.

Overall, we loved this MathArt course. I am excited to get to the rest of them. It is very inspiring, and I love the real-world connections. This is a type of learning that I love to see in our homeschool. If you'd like to see more of the other courses, the review crew all picked different courses to try out from the bundle. You can click on the banner below, and see what they did!