Cultural Studies: Winter, Week 8

Earlier in the term I mentioned that we've been converting distances to feet to show how big the distances are from school or Portland to OMSI or Africa in really BIG numbers. One thing that we've found really helpful in comparing the different distances, and which also introduces helpful skills in number recognition and counting, is counting the numbers in each specific amount of feet. That is, it is about 528 feet (thanks Google Maps!) to Buckman from ChildRoots. That has 3 numbers in it and seems like a super huge number. But then we mention that to get to OMSI it is 11,088 feet from school. That distance has 5 numbers in it so imagine just how far that would take to walk there? The gigantic number that always really gets them excited is the equator which is over 131 million feet around, and has 9 numbers in it. The guesses for how long it would take to walk that (5 weeks, 3 years, etc) really get their minds pumping about just how big the world is. In comparing distances with the same amount of numbers we can know that the other is bigger by looking at the very first number.  If one distance is 1,000 feet and the other is 6,000 feet, we know 6,000 is bigger because 6 is bigger than 1. And the kids are on that every time!