From: Peggy <merlsor@wowway.com>
To: Teacher2Teacher Public Discussion
Date: 2005121511:25:40
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Manipulatives for square roots

Here's what I did--I am not a math teacher, just a desparate parent. I
needed to help my son "see" the square root thing, to understand how
the square root of 12 is a number somewhere between 3 (the square root
of 9) and 4 (the square root of 16) on a number line. 

I used a bunch of cut out squares, giving him numbers of squares to
make squares with (9, 16, 25) and showed him that the square root was
the number of squares in one side of the big square. 

Then I gave him 12 squares to make a square with. When he got stuck I
showed him that if he used 9 to make a square and then a pair of
scissors to cut up the remaining three he would be able to piece
together a square made up of 12 squares--and that he could count or
measure that in between number--more than three, less than four, that
was the number of squares in one side.

Don't know if this is the best way--but it did help with homework on
that night.

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