"Monstrously" Cool Factor Trees

One of the most popular Math activities right now with my 10 and 11 year old students is illustrating prime and composite numbers inspired by You Can Count on Monsters, an amazing math book by Richard Evan Schwartz.

You Can Count on Monsters: The First 100 Numbers and Their Characters

In this Brown University article, he explains the process he went through to come up with this book. Here are all 100 numbers in a poster.

Special Note: The poster was one of the finalists in the 2003 N.S.F. Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge!

And children can so easily do this themeselves as a classroom activity! For each prime number, they design a unique monster. For a composite number, the children create a factor tree (factoring it all the way to the primes) and then do a drawing of those prime number monsters playing together.

Here is some of Natalie's artwork from December 2016.

9 = 3 x 3

10 = 2 x 5

15 = 3 x 5

21 = 3 x 7

44 = 2 x 2 x 11

77 = 7 x 11

It's addictively fun... and a great way to practice factor trees!

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