## More Halloween Math

An Apollonian pumpkin patch and Sierpinski candy corn:

Great ideas for mathy porch decorations:

My favorite blood-thirsty online game from Murderous Maths:

And here’s some less-violent holiday math for the younger set:

## Easy-to-Make Counting Rope

This is wonderful! I am definitely not a crafts-person, but I can’t wait to make some of these. If I can just find my daughter’s pony beads….

From Cindy at love2learn2day, who got the idea from a math conference workshop by Kim Sutton.

Krista at the LivingMathForum wrote, “We’ve used these for several years. My son even made a bunch of them a few years ago and sold them at a homeschool resource fair. We always have one in most of our board games to help younger children add up their die rolls. I find them relaxing for some reason, just moving the beads along the cord, and my son will sometimes sit and listen to me reading, etc., and just manipulate the beads.”

### Playful Math Lessons

You can use these math activities to play with your counting rope:

## Math Teachers at Play #43 via Maths Insider

Welcome! I’m Caroline Mukisa from Maths Insider and the host of the the 43rd edition of the Math Teachers at Play carnival!

I’m delighted once again to be presenting a really cool range of math related blog posts and articles. This month, you’ll get to savor math posts related to McDonalds, Dexter, war, an ancient game, an inventor and more!

Do bookmark this page so you can come back and read any of the posts you don’t get time to read right now!

## More Than One Way to Solve It, Again

We continue with our counting lessons — and once again, Kitten proves that she doesn’t think the same way I do. In fact, her solution is so elegant that I think she could have a future as a mathematician. After all, every aspiring novelist needs a day job, right?

If only I could get her to give up the idea that she hates math…

## Permutations with Complications

How many of the possible distinct arrangements of 1-6 have 1 to the left of 2?

## Math Carnival Update, and an Algebra Puzzle

Oops! I misread my calendar last week. The Math Teachers at Play blog carnival will be this Friday at Maths Insider. That means you still have today and tomorrow to send in your blog post submissions using the handy submission form. See you at the carnival!

In the meantime, let me share with you this monster algebra puzzle from the Well-Trained Mind forum. Simplify:

$[ \left ( {x}^{\frac {3}{2x}} \right )^{\frac{x}{9}} \times \left ( x^{\frac{9}{15}} \right )^{\frac{5}{18}}]^3$

How would you explain this problem to a beginning algebra student who has just learned the exponent rules? Or to his non-mathy mom?

## And Don’t Miss…

These other mathy blog carnivals:

## How to Conquer the Times Table, Part 5

Photo of Lex times 11, by Dan DeChiaro, via flickr.

We are finishing up an experiment in mental math, using the world’s oldest interactive game — conversation — to explore multiplication patterns while memorizing as little as possible.

Take your time to fix each of these patterns in mind. Ask questions of your student, and let her quiz you, too. Discuss a variety of ways to find each answer. Use the card game Once Through the Deck (explained in part 3)as a quick method to test your memory. When you feel comfortable with each number pattern, when you are able to apply it to most of the numbers you and your child can think of, then mark off that row and column on your times table chart.

So far, we have studied the times-1 and times-10 families and the Commutative Property (that you can multiply numbers in any order). Then we memorized the doubles and mastered the facts built on them. And then last time we worked on the square numbers and their next-door neighbors.