My daughter, Lanie, has a shapes puzzle. She also has a shapes book. Sometimes we watch TV shows that teaches shapes. We often encounter the following shape:
That is not a diamond. That's a rhombus, a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. It really bothers me that we teach kids to call that shape a diamond. It's a rhombus. That's the mathematical term. Why in the world do we teach them to say diamond when they're little just so they can be taught in school that a rhombus looks like a diamond? Let's just teach kids the word "rhombus." R's can be tricky for little kids, but lots of words have r's in them. At the end of the day, "rhombus" really isn't significantly more difficult to say than "diamond." (Side note 1: I don't think I've ever seen an actual, precious diamond cut into the shape of a rhombus. I'm sure you could do it, but most diamonds don't look like that. Diamond is a silly name for this shape.) (Side note 2: That is the shape we use for the suit of diamonds in card games. However, clubs and spades aren't intuitive for most people. They just learn what each suit looks like. So I don't think we need to call this shape a diamond for the sake of cards.) I'm going to teach Lanie to say rhombus. And if some day she corrects you for calling that shape a diamond, know this: she's right.
Grace and peace,
BMH
No comments:
Post a Comment