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Math
In Technicolour
Math
should be colourful, hands on and fun. Here are some
teaching learning material that can make it happen. At
home, and in School.
text:
Amruta
Patil and Luke
Haokip
inputs from Rachna Chawla, Pooja Sukhpal
4
Rangometry: Rangoli, Geometry, Symmetry
 The colours of a summer day picnic are painstakingly
arranged around the rug in the shape of a leopard. Foam
pieces in bright orange, lavender, pistachio green,
cobalt blue - all in different geometrical shapes. In
another part of the room, a group of children, all third
graders, have created elaborate tesellations.
You can hear a child ask for a blue hexagon here, an
orange rhombus there. This is a party game, not Math
class. But the children are on first name basis with the
geometrical forms, and are well aware of which specific
form has the right number of sides to fit perfectly into
that gap in the picture.
The foam pieces are part of a set of Rangometry tiles
produced by the maverick organisation Jodo Gyan. Rachna
Chawla, 38 year old mother of two, has sworn by
Rangometry and other Jodo Gyan material for a while now.
“Its been three or four years since Kartik and Avni
played with their first Rangometry tiles, and they still
seem to love them. And they are so beautifully packaged
- they make great birthday party return gifts.”
Ask Chhavi Bhullar, 6 years, her favourite part about
playing with Rangometry and she says, “If you wet the
pieces a little, they stick onto the wall or glass! For
one full day!”
The need to make Math hands-on and colourful became
obvious to Usha Menon and EK Shaji, founders of Jodo
Gyan - during their interactions with junior school
groups.
“For example, the only kind of triangle children could
comfortably identify’ says Shaji, ‘was an
equilateral triangle. As soon as the form was isosceles
or scalene - it drew blank looks. A square resting on
one ‘tip’ was identified as ‘diamond’ - no one
associated the shape with their mental image of a square
(one resting on its base).”
The experiential side of Math - so essential to making
it accessible and interesting in formative years - was
missing. In shapes lie the possibility of patterns.
Hidden in patterns is the world of geometry. Rangometry
lets them find out. n
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