In response to a comment from a previous article about the loom-band craze, I investigated the matter in much more detail and with the objective of creating optimally dithered wristbands. After overcoming several difficulties, such as making anything in an adult size, I definitely believe this craze is wholesome and teaches useful skills to kids.
Most specifically, for a craft that requires all loops to be interlinked, a cursory understanding of directed graphs is essential. Indeed, I find it worrying that there are some five year olds who understand directed graphs more intuitively than some computer scientists.
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You may have seen a craze involving colorful elastic bands.
Don't despair! It is teaching children mathematics and geometry including Pascal's triangle and Fibonacci sequences. Even young children are learning terms such as hexagon and rhombus.
Furthermore, kids are also learning reading skills and fine motor skills while making friends and gaining confidence. Many are also learning about economics.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday July 14 2014, @12:31PM
Experimental results so far in the VLM household are:
1) Little kids have short attention spans, this is best done by tweens. I'm sure this is Nobel prize winning insight. There's a reason they only make little kids bracelets with this technique and not adult clothing or backyard hammocks or sailboat sails. You could teach kids a little about scalability by trying to make the worlds weirdest looking quilt with this technology.
2) Grandma, Auntie, Mom, and one baby sitter so far have found ways to get confused and eventually gave up on the fad after widely varying levels of success and effort.
3) The rubber bands don't vacuum off the floor either as poorly as you'd think or as well as you'd hope.
Further research continues, although glacially.
If you'd like to talk about kids fads on SN that are vaguely SN related, "Star Wars Origami Fever" swept the local grade school a bit more than a year ago and is pretty much all done now. Minecraft seems to be peaking / burning out in terms of "cool" in grade school probably because its getting co-opted by teachers and classrooms rather than being a "toy". I'm sure once summer vacation is over we'll be inundated with new fads.
(Score: 1) by hellcat on Monday July 14 2014, @09:18PM
Try an inverted piece of tape (like duck tape) on your hand to get the elastic bands.
I think this whole bit / fad is great! Wish I had the time to be 5.
(Score: 2) by anubi on Tuesday July 15 2014, @02:40AM
I found this whole thing informative.
I saw a kid putting one together at the eatery I attend a lot ( Del Taco ), and kinda marveled at the intricacy of the patterns the kid was putting on it. I thought of it more like those "Indian Braids" they had us making at summer camp in the Boy Scouts. ( Great way to take up a lot of time and earn more money for the camp store selling this highly time-consuming stuff to the kids instead of teaching them something useful ).
I thought it was just the latest fad of time-eater that keeps kids busy doing something harmless.
Never dawned on me about using it as a teaching aid for graph theory.
I saw it more as crochet. I stand corrected. Thanks!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday July 14 2014, @03:03PM
> Floyd-Steinberg Dithered Sine-Wave Loom-Band Wristbands.
I actually have a rare first edition of their first album on vinyl. Of course they were never as good after their thereminist died in that tragic LSD-related tiger-polo accident.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Monday July 14 2014, @04:43PM
Oh, I thought this was a paper on astrophysics or something.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aiwarrior on Monday July 14 2014, @04:09PM
Just wanted to drop the word that i felt immense joy with the layout of the website. Clean and report like. How I miss the web like that.
I have never heard of this "fad" but i loved the geek spin on it. Keep articles like this coming