Mantle and Maths

I finally finished reading Elephant in the Classroom, and I have finally sorted out where to next with Mantle of the Expert with my class for Term 3. The book had lots of interesting things to ponder, but I didn't get all excited like I did when I read Mathematical Mindsets. I have used a couple of ideas from it though. I tried one of the problems with my class - how many squares on a chessboard?
This was such a neat problem and the children behaved exactly as I thought they would. Ruby straight away came up and said 64, because 8 x 8 is 64. She seemed annoyed with me when I asked her to show me, I wanted proof, and while she was drawing up a grid on paper, other children were coming up with the same answer. This made her even more grumpy, she already "knew" the answer! After groups of children had all arrived at the same conclusion/ solution, I asked them to think about the question. I then had to push them further by telling them that 64 was not the answer. This resulted in a bit more thinking outside the box. Finally, Finn clicked, and shared the idea that there were 2 by 2 squares... 3 by 3 and then he was like, "oh man, that's gonna take ages to work out!"
Time run out and I suggested they think about the question in their own time. I was excited, I thought surely they would want to find the answer. Only Alicia found the answer, which she proudly presented to me the next day. "The answer is 204, it's 64 + 49 + 36 ..." I was so happy, I asked her to explain how she did it. She went online and got the answer, she did not understand why those numbers were added together, what they meant, or anything! So the question is still floating around, ready to be solved and fully understood. It's funny though, because there was a time when I probably would have said, "well done, you found the solution!" without actually questioning the child to see if they really do understand how and why it works.
Mantle never finished at the end of Term 2, we didn't close the company, and I didn't want to carry on, those little experts were beginning to muck around. So drastic action was taken.
First day back I placed a jar of ashes from my fireplace on the floor, with a label - T.K.T.B remains, and a few of their kinetic artworks scattered around.
A fire burnt down the building. Accusations flew around the room as a chain of consequences finally  ended (or began) with a storm. And we had no insurance. What a pity.
Luckily, an eccentric but wealthy woman saw our newspaper report, that we wrote as reporters,and has offered to finance rebuilding - if we open an art gallery.
Now I've got all my fun stuff rolled into one! The art, the maths and Mantle. Kinetic art is our focus  and will involve lots of technology, visual art and science. I have big plans!

I know this little clip is really pixelated and a bit crappy, but this is some super cool art maths inspired by Yaacov Agam's art. And this is a bit closer to what I hope we will be doing in the near future.