The third badge in the Math in Nature series is Design With Nature. This post takes a look at the Brownie Version. According to Badge Explorer, girl will use math to do things in the natural world, like find the age of natural objects, build a honeycomb, design a bird feeder, and go bird-watching.
The five short requirements are:
1. Calculate the age of a natural object
2. Explore the shape of beehives
3. Measure and build a bird feeder
4. Use ratios to make bird food
5. Graph data about birds
When you've earned this badge, you will know about natural objects. You’ll know how to measure, use scale and ratio, and make a graph.
Opening Activity
For an opening activity at the first meeting, girls work together to put together a jigsaw puzzle. The leader compares the way puzzle pieces fit together to tessellations, which are where repeating patterns fit together. There is also a discussion about how it was easier to put the puzzle together when girls work together.
Calculating the Age of a Natural Object
The first choice for this activity is to use a tree stump, or tree cookies (cross sections of a tree trunk) or photos of of tree cookies and to discuss the meanings of the annual rings. The girls then count the rings to determine the age of the tree and subtract the age of the tree from the current year to determine when it was planted. During the discussion the leader is supposed to use the word concentric to describe the rings and is to have the girls brainstorm about why some rings are thicker than others (better growing conditions=thicker rings).
The second option is to compute your age in "dog years" or "cat years". The VTK scripts talk about how animals age at different rates and gives says that dogs age 7 years for every human year, so a human 3 year old is like a seven year old dog.
The final option is to calculate the age of a snake. Girls are supposed to use field guides or the internet to learn about the size of different types of snakes but the VTK script gives the measurements needed for the activity. The girls look at given photos of three different types of snake and estimate the age of each. The leader then passes out strings cut to the size of the discussed snakes. The girls measure the strings and decide which snake they go with.
Explore the Shape of Beehives
After a discussion about bees and pollination, the leader talks about how beehives are tessellations--when shapes fit together without gaps or overlaps. Then she leads the girls in drawing hexagons with one inch sides in a tessellation. Then she uses words like "scale" and "ratio" to point out that to build a tessellation big enough for humans, you increase the scale and use a foot for every inch in the drawing. Then using pieces of balsa wood the girls assemble a honeycomb pattern.
The second choice is to make a bee hotel. Again the leader discusses bees, pollination and tessellation, but then points out that not all bees live in hives; some are solitary and do not make honey, but to help with pollination. She shows the girls the provided pictures of bee hotels, which people put out to attract pollinators. The girls then use paper tubes and other materials to make their own bee hotel with tessellations. The leader talking points include discussions of scale.
The final choice is to calculate the amount of honey (actually VTK says money) in a beehive. After a discussion about bees, pollination and tessellations, the girls use masking tape to "draw" a beehive, the honey boxes inside and the honey boxes into frames. Then the girls calculate the number of frames. Next, they are told that each frame holds five pounds of honey and using either counters or multiplication, they figure out how many pounds of honey are in the honey box. For the next exercise, the girls are told that each bee only makes 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime, and are then asked to calculate how many bees it took to fill one frame with honey at a rate of 96 teaspoons in a pound. Its a good thing the leader goes through this as a group exercise because I can't see this as a second or third grade problem. The answer is 5,760 bees.
Measure and Build a Bird Feeder
Use Ratios to Make Bird Food
The first option is to build a bird seed feeder. After a discussion about what birds eat, the leader teaches the girls to use measuring cups to measure liquids and solids. Then they make a feeder (directions given) and either look on the label of the thing used to find its volume or compute it. (definitely not a second grade skill). From there, the girls use ratio and proportion to change the given recipe into one that fits their feeder.
The other two options are to make a nectar bird feeder or to make a bird feeder for unusual food. With both there is a discussion about what birds eat and then the girls make a bird feeder and figure its volume. They then use ratios make enough of the provided recipe to fill their feeders.
Graph Data About Birds
This requirement is about bar graphs. Two of the options have the girls observing their bird feeders for six days and gathering data about the amount of food eaten--one option leaves the feeder in one location, the other moves it around to try to determine the best place for it. The third option is to go bird watching and to record how many birds of each type your see, and whether they are eating. Once the data has been gathered, the leader shows them how to make a bar graph to display the data. A fourth option is to use data supplied in VTK to draw a bar graph.
The leader talking points include the words "data", "ornithologist", "data set" and "bar graph"
VTK Resources
Resources for this badge that are located on VTK are:
- Bee Hotel Photos
- Honey Box Photo
- How Old Am I? Worksheet to figure the age of snakes
- Sample Nectar Feeder Data
- How to Build a Seed Feeder (includes recipe for seed feed)
- How to Make a Nectar Feeder (includes recipe for nectar)
- Tree Cookie Photo
- How To Build a Bird Feeder for Unusual Food
- My Bird Data
- Honeycomb Photo
- Girl Scout STEM survey
- Materials List for all Brownie Math in Nature badges, broken down by activity
- Glossary for all Brownie Math in Nature badges
- Overview of Brownie Math in Nature badges
My Comments
I review badges as they are written. I read all the VTK materials and try to determine where the badge authors are going. I do not try to figure out what the badge could be, or whether I should leave out A, or add B. If a major part of the VTK script for an activity is leading the girls through a math problem, I consider that problem to be important to earning the badge. I try to determine whether my girls, given what I know about them, would enjoy the badge as written, and whether I would enjoy leading it.
For this badge, I think calculating the volume of the bird feeder, learning to measure liquid and dry ingredients, doing some math to calculate age, using ratios to calculate the proper amount of bird food to make, and creating a bar graph are a necessary part of the badge--it is a math badge after all. However, I do not think most of those activities are appropriate for most girls in second grade or early third grade.
While making the bird feeder and bee hotel and watching the birds briefly sound like fun, and while I might take on one of the math problems, I don't think my girls are capable of most of that math, and I know that doing all that math would lose them quickly.
One thing I found that I did like was the last resource listed above--the overview of the badge. It contained a summary of each activity, similar to what I've written here--in other words a lesson plan without talking points. I think a lot of people would like a resource like this rather than the scripts in VTK.
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