NatureGlo's eScience MathArt Online 4-Class Bundle - A New TOS Review!!

We really like math in our house ... hard not to with a dad, aunt, grandmother, and great-grandmother who also are math people (all teachers across the board for high school and college). So when we had a chance to be part of the review team for a new approach to math I wanted to check it out! I knew that my art loving children would love this new approach with NatureGlo's eScience. We have been enjoying our review of the MathArt Online 4-Class Bundle where we focused on one class, called Math Connections in the Real World, that has taught us TONS on the Golden Ratio, Golden Rectangle, and the Fibonacci sequence. My kids have been going all around the house and outside searching for items that fall into the Fibonacci numbers.

We had access to all the classes offered within the MathArt Online 4-Class Bundle - Math Connections in  the Real World, MathArt in Ancient Cultures, MathArt: Patterns in Nature, and Mathematics in the Arts & Sciences. All of them were created to show the connections between art, nature, culture, and science with MATH. That is amazing! A lot of times math is taught in a vacuum without it's connection to the world. Really the world is FULL of math! Each one of these online classes have 6 lessons and can be done "live" in a classroom setting or done on your own time.

Each lesson is jam-packed. First you have the slide show presentations. Most of us thought that the way they were presented were a little weird ... more because it was recorded live and we were watching a play-back of the lessons being taught. There were some times where she seemed to have lost her place on the slide or where there were slight tech issues. There were also some times where the students were interacting, but there was some silence so we wouldn't know if it had glitched or if it was just because we were waiting on the students to respond. Once you get used to that, they are fine. There is a way to go through the slideshow on your own (which I did the first time by accident.) At the end of each part of the lesson you hit the MARK COMPLETE and it will bounce you to the next part of the lesson. You can't move to the next lesson without completing the previous one.

Each lesson has 3 - 9 sections and within those sections there are extra videos, activities, and projects that can be delved into. There are also worksheets you can print and a studyguide to help write down the information the student is learning. Depending on how many activities/extras you do, each of these lessons will take longer than specified ... so a 6 week course (on your own time) could take much longer. And if you have younger children (this is recommended for 10 and up) then you might want to leave out some of the harder projects. We opted to try and do as many of them as we could do. Some we couldn't ... like making Fibonacci cookies (I was really just being lazy and might do this later this month) would have been an all day project since we are trying to do gluten free for my son and I have no ingredients to make cookies to fit GF and DF and dye free! (It's been an eye-opening experience). But they LOVED going out in nature and finding flowers and pinecones (even buildings) to see if they fit into the Golden Ratio/Golden Rectangle pattern.

We are just in the 4th lesson of Math Connections in the Real World, but my eldest daughter is really into history and specifically Cleopatra. She is loving doing this one, which I was sure she would.  My son also loves history so he may have more interest in the slides for this one ... we will see. The first 3 and a part lessons have taken us about 2 weeks to complete each. They have been using all the information they have learned to complete fun designs, pictures, builds, etc. I think they have really enjoyed exploring the math concepts they are learning. And the last lesson explores music and the Fibonacci sequence so I expect they will be fiddling with the keys on the piano and trying to make songs that fit the sequence. We have a toss up between MathArt in Ancient Cultures and Mathematics in the Arts & Sciences for which class we should take next. If we do the second of those first I can not WAIT to delve into Celtic Art and my husband will love the sections on Fractals!

Here are some of what my girls thought about the course:

Arianna - The way that the slideshows were put together were cool and hearing her read it helped it go by faster. We learned a lot of interesting information. The Fibonacci sequence is certainly found in a lot of places in the world and in nature. A lot of grass plants around our house seem to also grow with the Fibonacci sequence as their base. We also checked out dandelions and the blowy part of their flower which also seemed to have that same pattern. Even our wild growing the way the Carolina Jasmine grows the buds would turn as they came off of the stem in the angle similar to the Fibonacci sequence. I found a wild strawberry(or raspberry) plant and if you look closely at it the leaves are in 3's on each stem. The flower itself has 5 petals in the shape of a pentagon if you draw a line from the point of the top of each petal. Mom took a picture so you could see.

Audrie - I loved all the activities that went along with each lesson where we were able to explore each section in depth. We watched LOTS of You Tube videos. I think I know the Fibonacci sequence really well now - well up to 55. ;) 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 ... yep that's as far as I can get. We also made some spirals and other cool designs. I made this flower - a rose, mine were close to the Fibonacci numbers, but not them exactly. I also drew a  pineapple and some doodles with spirals and flowers. I had a lot of fun doing all of the activities.

My husband sat in on a few of the lessons. He did not feel it was as organized as well as it should have been. He thought the information was good, but the original "live" slideshow he was put off by. My younger son (only 9) didn't like those either, but he is younger then the age range and he was usually engaging when we were doing the activities and extras. My husband did say that the activities and all the extras she gathered were well developed and helped really cement the subject matter.
All in all, Gloria Brooks has created a fun way to show the connections of math to real life. This is definitely a must in today's world which is largely full of people who comment that they hate math or want a job that has nothing to do with math. I believe this program would be helpful for the math 'hater' as well as the math 'lover' ... both coming to grips that we can't live without math. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and YouTube!

Other members of the Crew explored other of the courses available through NatureGlo's eScience MathArt Online 4-Class Bundle, so be sure to check out those by clicking on the link below! Leave a comment and let me know which course you would most like to try.