Okay, are anyone else’s kids out there OBSESSED with Rainbow Loom® bracelets??? If your kids aren’t, consider yourself lucky in one way and unlucky in another. Consider yourself lucky because you aren’t finding little rubber bands all over your house (not fun with an 11 month old who manages to find anything that gets left on the floor) AND you aren’t having to watch endless videos on YouTube to figure out how to make the different kinds of bracelets. Consider yourself unlucky because the math my two older kids (6YO and 5YO) are doing is amazing and has provided yet another chance for me to #TMWYK (Talk Math With Your Kids). There is honestly too much to put into one post because my oldest decided to sell the bracelets and necklaces he has been making at local Farmer’s Markets so that has brought another level of math/business (how much to sell them for, figuring out the change to give people, paying for new supplies, etc.) into this whole Rainbow Loom® Math equation. So for today, I am going to focus on how the Rainbow Loom® has helped my two kids develop some of the CCSS Mathematical Practices in their lives and show some photos that I took that made me think of Andrew Stadel’s Estimation 180.

Rainbow Loom® and the Math Practices

I am quoting some text from the K-5 Elaborations of the Math Practices instead of the original Math Practices.

MP #1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

Young students might use concrete objects or pictures to show the actions of a problem, such as counting out and joining two sets to solve an addition problem. If students are not at first making sense of a problem or seeing a way to begin, they ask questions that will help them get started.

When they find that their solution pathway does not make sense, they look for another pathway that does.

This has been astounding for my 5YO daughter especially. My 6YO son is very driven & dedicated, the type who can’t stop until whatever he is working on is done. But my daughter is completely different. When my son first got into building the bracelets there were plenty of times my daughter would start one and get distracted by something and I would find her later with the bands still on her fingers (they prefer to make them on their fingers instead of using the loom). Now if you’ve ever made a Rainbow Loom® bracelet on your fingers you know this is not a good thing, because they cut off your circulation. So, for awhile I stopped letting her do them because she would always forget to finish. But lately she has gotten back into it. Sunday morning she made a full necklace (first time ever!!), bracelet, and ring that all matched. Best part was, she did it all in one sitting! Now I know this isn’t like persevering with a math problem. But getting kids these days to persevere with anything is an accomplishment. In a society were everything is accessible instantaneously, it is nice to have something your kids have to work at to get.

It is also cool to see both of them notice when things aren’t going right. When their pattern goes awry, they didn’t loop over in the correct place, or whatever problem comes their way, they don’t just give up. They have learned to find a way to fix it and if it can’t be fixed they start over and try again.

MP #2 & 4: Reason abstractly and quantitatively; Model with mathematics.

For example, to find the area of the floor of a rectangular room that measures 10 m. by 12 m., a student might represent the problem as an equation, solve it mentally, and record the problem and solution as 10 x 12 = 120. He has decontextualized the problem. When he states at the end that the area of the room is 120 square meters, he has contextualized the answer in order to solve the original problem. Problems like this that begin with a context and are then represented with mathematical objects or symbols are also examples of modeling with mathematics (MP.4).

This idea has shown up almost every time my son makes a bracelet. He has a contextual situation (The number of rubber bands it takes to make a bracelet/necklace compared to the number of rubber bands he already has looped together) and he decontextualizes it (pulls the math out), solves it and then puts the numerical answer back into the context. Here is a short video of him helping his sister figure out how many more rubber bands she would need to complete her necklace.

MP #6: Attend to precision.

Elementary students start by using everyday language to express their mathematical ideas, realizing that they need to select words with clarity and specificity rather than saying, for example, “it works” without explaining what “it” means. As they encounter the ambiguity of everyday terms, they come to appreciate, understand, and use mathematical vocabulary. Once young students become familiar with a mathematical idea or object, they are ready to learn more precise mathematical terms to describe it.

My kids have been attending to precision in their placement/arrangement of the bands but also when explaining how to make the bands to others. The videos you can find on YouTube for the more complex bracelets have made my son pay close attention to the vocabulary being used by the person in the video. However, even on the more simple formats of bracelets and necklaces my son has to be very precise when he is explaining and teaching his sister or his buddies how to build them.

MP #7: Look for and make use of structure.

Mathematically proficient students at the elementary grades use structures such as place value, the properties of operations, other generalizations about the behavior of the operations…For example, when younger students recognize that adding 1 results in the next counting number, they are identifying the basic structure of whole numbers.

My kids really don’t like the more complex bracelet designs and have pretty much stuck with the Fishtail. The ease of this design has allowed us to focus on the patterns that appear to help him determine which color to put on next. In the video I link to, it is easy because you do one of each color but my son still noticed how the next color you put on your finger is the same color as the bottom band that is already on your finger. As my son got better at making the Fishtails he decided to experiment with different patterns with his colors (3 of one color, 1 of another for example) but as he changed the pattern of the colors, it became more difficult for him to keep track of what color comes next…until he discovered the structure to the patterns.

One other interesting structural observation my son made came when he was putting all of the bracelets he made onto his two wrists. He said “Mom, I have an odd number of bracelets!” I turned around and saw this:

I asked him how he knew it was odd and he said it was because he couldn’t get the same amount on both wrists…one wrist had more than the other. He went on to explain that if he only had 10 (or 1 less) then it would be even because both wrists would have the same amount (5).

There are lots of ways that you can use the latest craze that your students are so engrossed in to engage them in mathematics, this is just a brief glimpse into some of the conversations my kids and I have had these past few months. What other ways can you see using the Rainbow Loom® to engage kids in mathematics? Here is one more for some of you upper elementary folks.

Rainbow Loom® Estimation

As I mentioned previously, I saw a lot of estimation opportunities that you could do with your class using the rubber bands. There were a few times when my son knocked over his case that I found myself asking “How many *!@#! rubber bands are in this *!@#! case!?!?!” So, pose these tasks to your students to build their estimation skills (and check out more amazing estimation tasks at Estimation 180) just don’t ask it to them in the way I said it in my head. 🙂