The 12 Days of Mathematics for Christmas: Day 7

Welcome to Day 7 of the Twelve Days of Mathematics for Christmas:

These activities were inspired by one of my grandsons’ favorite Christmas songs: the Twelve Days of Christmas. There are activities for K-3. Intermediate – MS (grade 4 – grade 7), and Secondary (Grade 8 –Grade 12) and correlated to the number of the day. Check below for the links to the FREE resources for both TES US and TES UK.

The Twelve Days of Mathematics

Day 7: Seven Swans a-Swimming

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves and a partridge in a pear tree.

Day 7 is all about patterns! Younger mathematicians will explore patterns via calendar

math – including a few riddles. Older mathematicians will look at some interesting patterns that happen when dividing by 7 framed in the 7^th fractions between 0 and 1. Secondary mathematicians will have the opportunity to work with one of the more famous historical problems – The Seven Bridges of Königsberg.

The MacTutor has a biography on Leonhard Euler as well as an article on topology and pictures that can be used of the bridges and town:

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Euler.html http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Topology_in_mathematics.html

pictures: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Extras/Konigsberg.html

The Math Forum also has an interesting piece on the 7 Bridges problem:

http://mathforum.org/isaac/problems/bridges1.html

NCTM Illuminations has an introductory lesson on graph theory and Euler circuits: Embroidered Math: https://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=2995