The Carnival of Homeschooling #85: School Stuff Edition at Dewey’s Trehouse is stocking up for back-to-school season. From comfy couches to high-tech gadgets, they have a bit of everything. Be sure to check it out.
And the 132nd Carnival of Education comes to my neighborhood—well, to Illinois at any rate—hosted at Education Matters. Plenty of great reading to browse, think about, and post comments on. Enjoy!
This post has been revised to incorporate all the suggestions in the comments below, plus many more activities. Please update your bookmarks:
Or continue reading the original article…
What we know about ancient Egyptian mathematics comes primarily from two papyri, the first one written around 1850 BC. 
This is called the Moscow papyrus, because it now belongs to Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. The scroll contains 25 problems, mostly practical examples of various calculations. Problem 14, which finds the volume of a frustrum (a pyramid with its top cut off), is often cited by mathematicians as the most impressive Egyptian pyramid of all.
Procrastinating blogger that I am, I missed two out of my three favorite blog carnivals this week. The Carnival of Mathematics XIV went up a full two days early at Vlorbik on Math Ed, featuring several interesting math articles for your browsing pleasure.
Someone asked me if I was ever sorry I had chosen mathematics. I said, “I didn’t choose! Mathematics is an addiction with me!”
If we are to teach mathematics at all, real success is not possible unless we know that the subject is beautiful as well as useful. Mere utility of the moment without any feeling of beauty becomes a hopeless bit of drudgery, a condition which leads to stagnation.
…What would mathematics have amounted to without the imagination of its devotees—its giants and their followers? There never was a discovery made without the urge of imagination—of imagination which broke the roadway through the forest in order that cold logic might follow.
Here are a few challenging word problems from Singapore:
I did fine on the 3rd-grade problems, but I stumbled a bit on the 4/5th-grade “How much sugar…” problem. The toy cars were tricky, but manageable. I misread the problem with the chocolate and sweets at first — I think of chocolates as a sub-category of sweets, but in this problem they are totally different. (Perhaps “sweets” are what I would call “hard candy”?) Finally, I had to resort to algebra for the last two Grade 6 questions.
How many can you solve?
(In the last episode, Dr. Fibonacci Jones discovered a torn scrap of papyrus, covered with hieroglyphic numbers. He promised to teach his daughter, Alexandria, how the ancient Egyptian scribes worked multiplication problems using only the times-two table.)
Back at their tent, Dr. Jones handed the papyrus scrap to Alexandria. “What do you see?” he asked.
“Well, there are two columns of numbers,” Alex said. “Let me write them down.” She got a piece of notebook paper and translated the hieroglyphs. 
Click on the image for a larger view. Translate the numbers for yourself before reading on. If you need help, read Egyptian Math in Hieroglyphs.
Can your students solve this problem?
There are 20% more girls than boys in the senior class.
What percent of the seniors are girls?
This is from a discussion of the semantics of percent problems and why students have trouble with them, going on over at MathNotations. (Follow-up post here.)
Our pre-algebra class just finished a chapter on percents, so I thought Chickenfoot might have a chance at this one. Nope! He leapt without thought to the conclusion that 60% of the class must be girls.
After I explained the significance of the word “than”, he solved the follow-up problem just fine.
My daughter has been decorating the kitchen, and she decided to hang these old photos that came with the house. The frames needed repairs, so I took the opportunity to scan the photos. (Click for larger view.)
I wish I knew who the people were, or when the photos were taken. The house shows changes over the years. Eventually, the back porch was closed in to create a pantry and laundry room off the kitchen.
The horse cart picture has a date across one corner. It looks like 9/1908.
This young boy has taught his pony a trick: to step up on a box or something — I can’t quite see what.
Can anyone identify this car? The boy looks sweet with a bouquet for his mother. I wonder if that’s her in the driver’s seat.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 
