How chardonnay can improve your kid's math grade

If you are like me, the older my kids get the harder it is to help them in math. Luckily, when my son bombed a math quiz the teacher offered extra credit to off set some of the lost points. The assignment was something like: "use the mathmatics of  area  to measure something in your house." I'm sure right now you are thinking: "I will do anything to help my kid in math- especially...I mean "even"
if it requires drinking chardonnay"

We have a teen-friendly basement with a snack bar, sauna and game area. My son has friends over frequently to watch hockey, football & baseball on the big tv. They shoot pool, have poker tournaments and play darts. To protect the wall behind the dart board my brother made us a wooden frame. How is this related to the math extra credit, you ask? Well, the dart board frame is covered in  wine corks.

The project my son chose was: how many wine corks did it take to cover our dart board frame. He figured the area of the frame. He figured the area of the circular dartboard and deducted it. He figured the area of a single wine cork. With this information he could calculate how many wine corks were on the backdrop. His teacher was very impressed.

I know I'm stretching here, but had I not kept all those corks we would not have had a cool dart board backdrop which provided the educational experience for my son to earn extra credit.

When my husband asked " How many corks!? How much per bottle?" I answered, "Let's not do the math."

P.S.: I started my blog because I wanted to share my ideas about collecting & upcycling. This dart board backdrop is both!