I want to play catch too…..get lost
Ben and David went to the playground with David’s sisters Jenny and Becky. Jenny and Becky were playing catch with a ball.
David and Ben were getting bored. David thought it was not fair that Becky and Jenny did not let them play.
David asked Jenny, “I want to play catch too.”
Becky shouted, “Get lost!”
David said, “I am going to tell mom when I get home.”
Jenny gave in. She threw the ball to David and said, “Here, catch.”
Now Becky was throwing the ball to Jenny, Jenny to David and David to Becky. Each throw was about 10 meters.
Ben said, “Looks like you guys are making a nice triangle when you throw the ball.”
David countered, “Not just a triangle – it’s an equilateral triangle because each throw is the same distance.”
Quadrilaterals
David threw the ball to Ben and now he was in the game too. It was a nice little foursome. Each throw made the side of a rectangle. They moved around throwing the ball in different shapes of rectangles as they ran around. Sometimes they made just a rectangle but other times they moved around to made sure that each throw was the same distance to make a square.
David quipped: You know we can also make parallelogram, rhombus, trapezoid or just any quadrangle.
Becky countered: What’s the difference?
To this, Jenny responded, “When we get home we’ll do a Google search to find the different images.”
Soon it was time for dinner and they all went home.
David’s dad, George, was going to set up the West Town Little League games. Ben’s mom told him that he could also play there. Almost a hundred kids had come to play in the West Town Little League teams. George was really surprised. He had not expected that many kids to show up. George announced, “May I have your attention, please. I am George. I am going to set up the games this year. But there are too many players to play ball. Today, let us just play catch. Please divide up in small teams to play catch.”
Pentagon and other shapes
Ben and David along with 3 other kids were throwing a ball to each other. They had a coach standing in the middle. Every kid was standing about 5 meters away from the coach and they were throwing the ball in one direction from one kid to the next.
Ben told David, “The ball is going around in a circle.”
David corrected Ben and saying, “No this is just a shape with 5 sides. It is not round. I think you call it a hexagon.”
The coach corrected them because this was a pentagon with only 5 kids being involved.
One more kid joined their team and they kept playing the same way, the coach in the middle and each player about 5 meters away from the coach.
The coach said that now this was a hexagon.
Then two more players joined and that made an octagon.
Ben then said to David, “If all the 100 kids were in one team, then would you call it a circle?”
David said, “You could if you wanted to. But to make a real circle you would need zillions of kids playing catch like this.”
Ben chuckled, “Yes but then we would never get a turn.”
Challenge
Here are some of the signs you see on the road. What are the number of sides in the shapes of the YIELD sign, the STOP sign and the ROAD WORK AHEAD sign? What are the shapes of the red light, the yellow light and the green light? No solution provided to this challenge.
Math Stories For You 