Maths in the wild

Just before our half-term break for Easter, my school took a couple of days "off" for one of our occasional Inter-Disciplinary Experiences. This one was focused on Maths (um, actually, it was pretty exclusively maths; not sure what was so "inter-disciplinary" about it - but who cares!), as students were sent on a 'treasure hunt' to find and solve a number of mathematical conundrums that had been devised for them.

Thursday, spent in the gorgeous Xixi Wetlands Park just south of our school, was splendid, like a balmy foretaste of early summer. Friday, when we ventured down to the far southern end of the city, to Hangzhou's most unusual tourist attraction, the Bagua Tian (a group of fields arranged in the form of Taoism's 八卦, the 'Eight Symbols'). suddenly turned grey and rainy, as if our host city's dreaded 'plum rains' season had descended on us a month early this year. Such is Hangzhou's weather: decidedly changeable.

It is no doubt rather subversive and heretical of me to say so, but I feel that the value of these activities lies more in giving our kids an opportunity to relax for a while (we do drive them very hard most of the time) rather than in providing any very meaningful learning experience.


Here's a photo slideshow I made of our excursions.