[Photo by frozenchipmunk.]
School is in session, which means I am once again searching out pithy, inspirational quotations for my chalkboard. Some recent tidbits…
The more I work and practice, the luckier I seem to get.
— Gary Player
Quoted in Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell
[Image courtesy of the Images of American Political History.]
In 1876, a politician made mathematical history. James Abram Garfield, the honorable Congressman from Ohio, published a brand new proof of the Pythagorean Theorem in The New England Journal of Education. He concluded, “We think it something on which the members of both houses can unite without distinction of party.”
[Photo by geishaboy500 (CC BY 2.0).]
Are you looking for creative ways to help your children study math? Even without a workbook or teacher’s manual, your kids can learn a lot about numbers. Just spend an afternoon playing around with a hundred chart (also called a hundred board or hundred grid).
My free 50-page PDF Hundred Charts Galore! printables file features 1–100 charts, 0–99 charts, bottom’s-up versions, multiple-chart pages, blank charts, game boards, and more. Everything you need to play the activities below and those in my new 70+ Things to Do with a Hundred Chart book.
Download Free “Hundred Charts Galore!” Printables
Shop for “70+ Things To Do with a Hundred Chart” Book
And now, let’s play…
Pre-algebra students stand at the threshold of adventure. Behind them lie the rocky plains of school arithmetic. Ahead, the trail winds into a murky, tangled woods and disappears in the shadows. Who knows what monsters might live in a place like that?
Actress and math maven Danica McKellar has traveled through the pre-algebra jungle and beyond, up the slopes to higher math. She survived the journey, and now, on the heels of her bestselling book for math-phobic middle schoolers, she has written Kiss My Math to guide uncertain students along their way.
Unlike the case with most Hollywood movies, this sequel is an improvement.
[Photo by Niner.]
Thanks to the remnants of Hurricane-turned-Tropical-Depression Ike, our creek has risen well past last spring’s high-water mark. Of course, this is nothing compared to the devastation down south, but it’s enough to keep us trapped at home for the day.
If you’re curious about what’s around that corner of our driveway…
[Image from Let’s Play Math! blog, a little more than a year ago.]
Looks different, doesn’t it? My blog has changed so much in the past year that I hardly recognized it myself. I had some nostalgic fun clicking around the old articles — two of which still show up on the “Most Popular Posts” sidebar list.
I am so grateful to all of you have stuck with me and have passed my article links on to your fellow teachers or homeschooling friends. Thank you all!
If you’d like to explore the history of your blog or favorite website, you can enter the link at:
[Photo by FXR [aka Soundz’FX].]
Our homeschool co-op classes start today, and I’m not ready. I never am. Life keeps going, anyway.
[Photo by *clairity*.]
Have you ever noticed how very different little girls are from little boys, in the way they play and in the way they think about things? Princess Kitten has been playing around with Backwards Math again, and my first thought was, “None of my boys would ever have done this with numbers.”
We’ve all heard the saying, Don’t judge a book by its cover, but I did it anyway. Well, not by the cover, exactly — I also flipped through the table of contents and read the short introduction. And I said to myself, “I don’t talk like this. I don’t let my kids talk like this. Why should I want to read a book that talks like this? I’ll leave it to the public school kids, who are surely used to worse.”
Okay, I admit it: I’m a bit of a prude. And it caused me to miss out on a good book. But now Danica McKellar‘s second book is out, and the first one has been released in paperback. A friendly PR lady emailed to offer me a couple of review copies, so I gave Math Doesn’t Suck a second chance.
I’m so glad I did.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 