Art Music and Mathematics

Honoured to be named in Top Global Teacher Bloggers and contribute to Huffington Posts 2016.

Happy to pen down my thoughts for question of the month How can we maximize the value of art and music in education and how can it be blended with more traditional subjects (math, science, history, etc.

Music and art are significant part of past, present and future. Societies have emerged with integration of art and music. In the school education system it is observed that art and music is considered as a part of co scholastic. As a result, children do not do deeper study of the two and get less aware of their significance and relevance in life. We see students participating in annual days and inter school events showcasing their talent of dance, music and art. As a Mathematics teacher from past 20 years, I believe that while teaching Mathematics we should connect it with other subjects as well. In this journey, I did many experiments which involves integration of Mathematics, art and music.

Here are some ideas for learning music and art together with traditional subjects like Mathematics.

Creating geometric designs - students can be asked to draw geometrical designs and explore Mathematics used in it. Students appreciate the presence of concepts like rotation, symmetry, transformation, tessellations etc. Online tools can be used for creating more complex designs involving fractals, 3D shapes etc. Here is a sample of my student work ( http://ift.tt/2cTGTEw )

Making Line Designs- (http://ift.tt/2daIHLN )

Exploring Mathematics in architectures- In 2013, I did a project based inter school competition in mathematics which was based on designing own architecture by exploring architectures in the world inspired by Mathematics. We created a wiki platform (http://ift.tt/2daJegM ) Students from 12 different schools participated and collaborated online. On the laste day they visited our school with their own creation and presented the work. Every week, I used to assign specific tasks to students on the wiki. An activity was given in which students created geometrical designs using online tool (http://weavesilk.com/ ). We had a creative discussion on the art created and Mathematics used in such designs. Here is a sample of student work ( http://ift.tt/2daKEHQ )

Kirigami and Mathematics- Kirigami is an art of paper folding and cutting. Students can be asked to fold paper and cut to create designs. They can explore different designs formed and Mathematics in it. Here is a sample of student work (http://ift.tt/2cTEN7H )

Educational field trips- Students can be taken to visit nearby monuments/parks/buildings and observe art forms on the architectures. By exposing children to real time, it helps in generating interest in history and arouse curiosity to know about it in deeper sense. Research based interdisciplinary projects can be designed which are completed by students during the trip.

Mathematics in Music- Music and Mathematics are inter connected. Music is a sound that is organised in a meaningful pattern having rhythm. I read an article by Jack H David Jr. (http://ift.tt/2cTFwG6 ) which created my interest in giving projects to students on the said topic.