The Prime Radicals
Welcome to the ultimate clubhouse, where four good friends conceive, plan, research, design, create, build, decorate and fix it all themselves.
Browse This Program
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Show Me the Money
July 3, 2011
When Uncle Norms has trouble counting his change, the Rads take him to the Banker to make ,cents, of it all.
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A Balancing Act
June 26, 2011
With a rickety teeter-totter on his hands, Uncle Norm meets with an architect to build a brilliantly balanced seesaw for his backyard.
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How Things Stack Up...And Down
June 19, 2011
The Rads learn all about growing and shrinking patterns to help Uncle Norm stack his stubborn golf balls when they just won't stop falling down!
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A Cute Look at Angles
June 12, 2011
Uncle Norm creates a radical ramp for his toy cars, using angles, triangles, and slope, to make his cars as speedy as possible!
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Thinking About Linking
June 5, 2011
To pick up business at his Stuff'n Such Shop, Uncle Norm uses special folding techniques and a familiar shape to make a Norm-tastic new banner!
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The Cubic Rube
May 29, 2011
The Rads put their knowledge of cubic metres to the test, and add some green to Uncle Norm's backyard with a cool homemade planter box!
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Going the Distance
May 22, 2011
With dreams of becoming an Olympic long-distance runner, Uncle Norm meets with a gold medal-winning athlete to learn how to build a track in his backyard.
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Meeting the Standard
May 15, 2011
When Uncle Norm's toy dinosaurs stop getting along, he decides to separate them by learning to build a display case with help from Tim the tool man!
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It's About Time
May 8, 2011
When Uncle Norm misses out on tickets to the big game, he and the Rads make a , be back in __ minutes, clock so he won't miss out on any more fun!
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So You Think Uncle Norm Can Dance?
May 1, 2011
Uncle Norm learns how to move his feet to the beat in preparation for a top-secret ball - but is it enough to win a dancing prize?
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Totally a Maze Thing
April 24, 2011
Uncle Norm gets some a-maze-ing tips from a maze-master to make his work party totally fun for his ,hush hush, co-workers.
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Know When To Fold 'Em
April 17, 2011
,Argggh matey!, Uncle Norm be needin' a pirate hat for his buccaneer outfit - and thanks to an origami artist and some cool folding tricks, he completes his ensemble!
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Leader of the Pack
April 10, 2011
With advice from a style-stavvy fashion consultant, Uncle Norm learns how to pair a few tops with a few bottoms to make enough outfits for his entire trip to Hawaii.
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Into Infinity and Beyond
April 3, 2011
With only one million seconds to complete a hush hush assignment, Uncle Norm is in a panic, until the Rads go see an astute astronomer to find out all about big numbers.
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Thinking Inside the Box
March 27, 2011
When Uncle Norm needs to mail an oddly shaped top-secret package, the Rads call on a box designer to create the perfect 3D box out of a 2D net.
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Radical Reflections
March 20, 2011
Uncle Norm and the kids make some radical reflections when they build their own kaleidoscope for Alanna's art project.
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True Grid
March 13, 2011
Uncle Norm's top-secret storage system gets an upgrade with the help of a firefighter and a grid map - so his ,hush hush, items will never be hard to find!
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Let's Face It
March 6, 2011
The Rads learn all about bilateral symmetry to help Uncle Norm make a mask so he can make 'facial' impression at his masquerade ball!
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Tessellational!
February 27, 2011
The Rads use tessellational patterns to cover up a huge hole Uncle Norm made in his wall while trying to get reception for one of his ,secret devices,.
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Code Name: Rad
February 20, 2011
When the Rads give Uncle Norm a code-tastic birthday present, he gets hints from a police officer to crack the code!
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Anything with Anything
February 13, 2011
Uncle Norm and the Rads have a ball using non-standard measurement tools, like a hairbrush, a doll, well anything really!... to make the perfectly sized hammock for his yard!
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Numberlicious!
February 6, 2011
With a dinner party fast-approaching and a recipe that only serves 4, Uncle Norm learns how to double his ingredients to feed his guests...with a little help from the Rads!
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Rad 'n Roll
January 30, 2011
A masterful music composer helps the Rads turn Uncle Norm's ear-splitting tunes into a sensational Clubhouse song!
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Ace the Lace
January 23, 2011
Uncle Norm's shoes get a makeover with totally 'lace-tastic' shoelace patterns after the Rads' skateboarding pals give them a lesson on lacing.
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No Accounting for Taste
January 16, 2011
A disastrously messy workshop has the Rads scrambling to help Uncle Norm create an inventory for all of his stuff, just in time for a visit from his boss!
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Rule of Thumb
January 15, 2011
When Uncle Norm gets wrapped up in papier maché, the Rads pay a visit to a sculptor to unwrap the secrets to body 'rules', so they can build him a bust!
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Getting Around
Uncle Norm is trying to get sparks to fly on his ingenious, possibly impossible pet project, "The Inventonator". He needs to find the perfect sized foil ball to fit into the hole atop his all-purpose invention machine, one that will spark its thoughts! But he can't figure out how to find one that is the right size. Never fear, the Rads know just the person to help - a bubble expert -who knows everything there is to know about measuring the circumference of spheres! What will happen to the Inventonator when Uncle Norm finally finds the perfect sized foil ball? Gist: This episode is about the perimeter of the circle and the special relationship between the length around a circle and the distance across the circle. Perimeter is the length around a shape. The length around a circle has a special name called circumference. The word circumference comes from the Latin word "circum" meaning around, and "ferre" meaning to carry. Circumference: to carry around, like a carnival ride.
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In the Mode
When Uncle Norm tells Alanna and Kevin that the local ice cream shop is sold out of their favorite Choco Crunch ice cream, they set off to figure out why Bernie's parlour can't keep it in stock. They learn all about the MODE (the most frequent value) from a local hat vendor, and gather data to help Bernie order the right amount of Choco Crunch ice cream. When the day is done, Uncle Norm is ,in the mode,. Gist: In the curriculum, children are introduced to one of the important measures of central tendency, the concept of mode: the number that occurs the most often in a set of data. Data displays are used to illustrate and communicate information. It is often easier to read information that is presented graphically-as long as it is represented effectively, and accurately. It is important to choose a format that suits the data, and to include clear titles and labels to guide the audience or reader in interpreting. Some examples of how the data can be presented include: tally charts, concrete graphs using models, pictographs, bar and circle graphs. Data management connects math studies to everyday life for students. For example, young children watch their caregivers collect data to solve everyday problems such as what to have for dinner.
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Colouring Inside the Lines
At the workshop, Uncle Norm is the smock-and beret-wearing picture of a tortured artist: he's hunched over a drafting table, swamped by a rising tide of crumpled paper (not to mention some crumpled dreams). The Rads watch him scribble, sigh, and spin around in his chair as he scrunches one page after another. ,Arrgh! I'm no da Vinci! I'm drawing a complete blank here!, moans Norm. After much consoling by Alanna and Kevin, Norm describes his goal of teaching the Inventonator simple animation, in the hopes of bringing to life their math-tastic adventures in a cartoon called ,Rad Stuff,. But what's he doing wrong?? The kids visit Jerry, an animator to learn his tricks of the trade - a grid technique that will help anyone learn to draw anything - even Uncle Norm! Gist: Grids are used in mathematics to chart information. Artists use grids to recreate images and produce artwork in correct proportion. Using grids to recreate an image teaches math skills and also creates a piece of art. Mathematics meets art through the topic of ,mystery pictures, which magically appear as students follow directions for coloring graph paper squares using coordinate information. In the curriculum, children are introduced to the coordinate grid system and the ,code, for locating specific squares or objects on the grid e.g., (2,C) (8,B) (4,D) and so on.
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Take me to Your Liter
Uncle Norm is heading off soon with his hush hush (wink blink) pals on a wilderness weekend. You know, camping, fishing, and singing songs by the fire. Anyway, he heard somewhere that a grown-up needs to drink one and one-half litres of water every day, and he's not totally sure how much a litre is. The the Rads help him figure out that one and one-half litres times two, or double, would add up to 3 litres, which would help him get through the two day weekend. Maybe finding out more about litres would help? Alanna knows a really neat place where they deal in litres all the time. It's a local dairy farm. ,A dairy farm! I like it. Milk cows and...more milk cows! It sounds moo-nificent!, Gist: Capacity is a measure of the amount of liquid a container can hold. In Canada, we use the metric system to measure volume: millilitres, litres and kilolitres. By Grade 3, children will have had experience with measuring liquids in school and at home. Children will have used relational containers to discover that one container holds twice as much liquid as the other, or that one container holds one-fourth as much as another. They will have experience with rain gauges: clear cylindrical containers used to measure the volume of rain in centimetres. ,Three centimetres of rain fell this morning in the school yard., They will have real world experience with litres of milk, individual juice boxes (one fourth of one litre), and ice cream (two litre). In the curriculum, children are introduced to capacity using the litre as the unit of measure.
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And Five Makes Ten!
You can always count on Uncle Norm, as long as you expect the unexpected! At the last minute, Alanna's swim team needed someone to manage the cash box at this morning's craft sale. It was up to Uncle Norm to save the sale, in spite of his fear of change ... making change, that is. Sure, he's run the Stuff 'n Such shop successfully for years, but (and the Rads may be surprised to hear this) even Uncle Norm isn't perfect. He just isn't as quick as he used to be at counting change without a calculator. It all makes sense when you're counting calmly by yourself, but keeping track while an impatient customer is staring you in the face ... that's pressure! Everyone is used to calculators counting change instantly, and sometimes customers seem to forget that when there's no machine, a person has to do that same calculating instead: one penny at a time! (,The price was $1.47 and you gave me $2. Whoops, do I give you back 2 or 3 pennies when I round up? And then you asked for nickels and dimes instead of quarters for the rest...wait, where was I?,) Fortunately, the sale was a success ... Now Uncle Norm and the kids are going to learn more about ,counting up, so they can write up tips on how to run a garage sale for the next team sale! They all get their money's worth when Kevin talks to a helpful vendor who organizes a cash drawer and provides customers with correct change every day. Gist: This episode is about ,counting up,, an important computational strategy in the classroom which is the basis for ,making change, in the real world. In the curriculum, children are required to represent and describe the relationships between coins and bills up to $10; estimate, count, and represent (using the $ symbol) the value of a collection of coins and bills with a maximum value of $10; count forward by 1's, 2's, 5's, 10's, 25's and 100's; and, solve problems that arise from real-life situations.
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Uncle Norm's Roots
Uncle Norm finds Alanna and Kevin in the Workshop, squinting through a magnifying glass at small maple trees in a planter. He coos as if it were baby kittens. The Rads received a loot bag with a maple sapling (aka ,family tree,) at their big family reunion. Uncle Norm is excited to know when they can start getting sap: bean seeds can grow as high as the tool shed in one summer, so why not a baby tree? The Rads explain that we measure a bean's growth in weeks and months, and Uncle Norm's growth in years and decades (counting by 1s and 10s), but trees grow more slowly: over decades (10 years), centuries (10 decades), and sometimes even millennia (10 centuries). Counting and grouping by 10s can make it easier to keep track of big numbers, especially when you talk about time. Uncle Norm is confused, so Kevin thinks of a place they ,gotta see,, where they can learn more about this kind of counting, and maybe about maple syrup too! Gist: A measurement always has units. For example, we measure time in millennia, centuries, decades, years, days, weeks, and hours. Without the unit, we do not know how much time has passed. The units that go with our measurements tell us what we are measuring and how much we have. In the curriculum, children are required to represent and explain, using concrete materials, the relationship among the numbers 1, 10, 100, and 1000, (e.g., use materials to represent the relationship between a decade and a century, or a century and a millennium).
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The Kilo Conundrum
Alanna and Kevin enter the workshop to find Uncle Norm crouched over a bathroom scale, staring through a magnifying glass at a solitary grape placed on it. They watch as he steps on the scale and off, and then back onto the scale: this time holding the grape and peering down at the display, looking confused. Then he spots Alanna and Kevin. Uncle Norm explains that he went grocery shopping to pick up some healthy snacks to have around for the kids and noticed he paid $5.00 for a kilo of grapes and was trying to figure out the cost of each grape. Kevin points out that one grape is really small doesn't weigh much at all, so it's really hard to check its weight on a bathroom scale. However, to satisfy Uncle Norm's kilo curiosity Alanna knows someone who deals with weighing things on a daily basis. He's a Veterinarian - an animal doctor. Alanna will visit him and, using her Rad Com Unit, send Uncle Norm the info via his Rad Com Helmet. ,This...we gotta see!, An excited Uncle Norm claps his hands together, severely mashing the bag of grapes, some of the bits splurting into his face. ,Uh, anyone for some grape juice?, The Kids share an ewww look and politely shake their heads. Gist: This episode is about accurate ways of weighing and appropriate use of the kilogram as a standard unit of measure. In the curriculum, children are required to choose benchmarks for a kilogram and estimate, measure, and record the mass of objects (e.g., can of apple juice, bag of oranges, bag of sand), using the standard unit of the kilogram or parts of a kilogram (e.g., half, quarter).
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Think of All the Probabilities!
Alanna and Kevin are looking out the workshop window watching the rain teem down. ,Sure hope Uncle Norm took an umbrella with him to his secret hush hush meeting., ,Ahem!, The kids turn to see a totally soaked and dripping Uncle Norm standing there. He takes off his sunglasses and wipes rain off his eyeballs. ,Gee, Uncle Norm, it's raining cats and dogs out there., ,I know. I just stepped in a large poodle., Frankly, Uncle Norm is totally perplexed. After all, it was really sunny when he left earlier. ,I mean, what were the chances it was gonna rain?, Gooood question! Alanna thinks talking to a TV weather forecaster just might help answer it. Norm loves the idea. He gets Alanna to take her Rad-Com Unit (RCU) along while he stays home to dry off. ,This...we gotta see!, Gist: This episode is about predicting the frequency of an outcome by interpreting data provided on a scale from 0 (impossible) to 100 (certain). In the curriculum, children are asked to describe probability as a measure of the likelihood that an event will occur, using mathematical language (i.e., impossible, unlikely, less likely, equally likely, more likely, certain).
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Playing the Angles!
Alanna and Kevin arrive at the workshop and are puzzled to see a cardboard skeleton hanging on the front door. Eerie music is playing in the background. They enter, making their way through a cobwebbed entranceway, to find Uncle Norm, in a black cape, hunched over his workbench. The entire workshop is decorated like a horror movie set. He turns around and the kids start slightly as he is wearing fangs and has what looks like a tray of eyeballs in hand. Uncle Norm gives them a big toothy grin. The fangs fall out and land on the tray. Kevin, ,Interesting new look for the workshop, Uncle Norm., Alanna, ,I'm guessing something's going on here., ,Correcto-roonie, oh nice niece o' mine. I'm throwing a haunted house party for my (wink blink) hush hush co-workers. Oh, where are my manners? Eyeball?, He holds out the tray. Tempting, but the kids pass. The place is definitely creepy but Uncle Norm feels it still needs a little something extra. Something with oomph! We here a ding and Uncle Norm zips off camera and immediately zips back into frame. He is now holding a gelatinous mold. ,I'm making a brain., Kevin notices there's something inside the centre of the mold, pulls out a small laser light from his pocket and shines the light through the mold. The light reveals a button, but it also refracts the light at an angle. ,Cool., This gives Kevin an idea. Uncle Norm should put on a light show for his party. It's all about angles and light. And he knows just who to see to get some great tips. ,This YOU gotta see!, In his excitement Uncle Norm slams his hand down and splatters jell-o all over the place. Gist: This episode is about standard measurement of angles using special instruments (the [simplified] protractor) and the size of angles, big, small, and right. In the curriculum, children are required to compare the size of angles in relation to the right angle (bigger than, smaller than) and to learn how ,angle finders, (very simple protractors) can be used to measure angles.
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Tangled Up In String
Oops - he's on his way out the door and Uncle Norm finds a tear in his coat! Using duct tape (riiip!) to repair the tear won't work, so he burrows into a ,Stuff 'n Such, junk pile, where he finds a sewing kit, but no thread! Rush, rush, he digs deeper and sees a piece of string art, made from lots of thread! Just as Uncle Norm is about to pull the artwork apart for his repair, Alanna and Kevin appear... in time to stop him from destroying an example of this colourful, and mathematical, art form. String art patterns are made with straight lines, but the finished product can give the illusion of curves. Uncle Norm and the Rads weave their way back through the history of string art, from its 19th century use as a math teaching tool, to a groovy wave of psychedelic popularity in the 1960s, right up to its connections with computer art today.
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Bunnies' OK Corral
Uncle Norm's neighbor Mrs. Pearplum's prized bunnies have escaped! The Rads need to find a way to help her build a better bunny corral... but what shape should it be so they have the most space using just the amount of fencing she already has? The Rads visit a local hobby farm to learn how perimeter and area work together to create the best bunny corral, this side of the workshop!
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Get In On The Fraction Action
Kevin and Alanna enter the clubhouse and find Norm on the telephone. He is ordering his favorite Mexican food. Some arroz con lima, some ceviche of course, guacamole, and his all time fave, a large cheese quesadilla! But could they slice it into four pieces instead of eight as he can't eat that many slices. Alanna and Kevin share a look and a grin. Norm raises an eyebrow, then chuckles. Kevin reacts with his patented office look, ,We are talking fractions here., Alanna is keen on helping Uncle Norm grasp the concept of fractions. She and her classmates have been asked to prepare different ethnic foods for school, foods from around the world, and she'll need to divide up her dish into equal portions. So while Kevin does some net researching she'll visit an expert to get some hands-on fraction action up close and relay the info to Uncle Norm, with his RCH on, via her RCU. ,This WE gotta see.,
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Time And Again
Alanna is overjoyed with the fact that she has won a prize in a school contest. It's a perpetual magnetic calendar. ,Cool,, says Uncle Norm, ,A purple dagnabit calendar., Kevin explains what a perpetual calendar is: It's a calendar you can use all year every year forever. ,And this is the kind you can stick on something metal like a fridge because it's magnetic,, adds Alanna. ,Got it. A ter-poop-ial calendar. Sticks to metal,, says Uncle Norm. Alanna holds up the box containing the calendar. Norm is impressed. ,Wow! That looks completely calendar-iffic!. Let me stick it to my fridge., He grabs the box and trips, causing the pieces to fly wildly about (zing zang fwang!) and stick to metal surfaces all over the place. One piece sticks to Uncle Norm's forehead. Kevin, to camera, ,That's weird., Norm, crossing his eyes, tries to at look the piece on his forehead. ,Can't argue with that., As they gather up the pieces of the calendar Uncle Norm expresses his interest in this magical calendar or Magi-calendar. He has lots of things to plan for, so exactly what does it do and how does it really work? Goood question. So the plan is Kevin and Norm will do some research on calendars while Alanna, keeping in touch via her RCU, will go visit a film director as they use calendars all the time to organize the shooting schedules for movies and TV shows. ,Whoa!, exclaims Uncle Norm, ,This we gotta see!,
