## Summer Problem Solving for the Young, the Very Young, and the Young at Heart

Here is yet another wonderful summer math opportunity for homeschoolers or anyone who works with kids: a free, 3-week mini-course on math problem solving for all ages.

The course is being organized by Dr. James Tanton, Dr. Maria Droujkova, and Yelena McManaman. The course participants include families, math clubs, playgroups, and other small circles casually exploring adventurous mathematics with kids of any age.

And then the real fun begins!

## Math Teachers at Play #63 via Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks

Hooray for Friday! Let’s celebrate by visiting this month’s Math Teachers at Play blog carnival, featuring mathematical activities, lessons, and games for all ages:

Hmm… let’s see… now where did I put my notes? I know that this is supposed to be the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival… but which one?

Maybe the following puzzle will help. In the grid below, do the following:

• Circle any number, then cross out the other numbers in the same row and column.

## What Do You Notice? What Do You Wonder?

If you want your children to understand and enjoy math, you need to let them play around with beautiful things and encourage them to ask questions.

Here is a simple yet beautiful thing I stumbled across online today, which your children may enjoy:

It reminds me of string art designs, but the app makes it easy to vary the pattern and see what happens.

• What questions can they ask?

I liked the way the app uses “minutes” as the unit that describes the star you want the program to draw. That makes it easier (for me, at least) to notice and understand the patterns, since minutes are a more familiar and intuitive unit than degrees, let alone radians.

## Summer School for Parents, Teachers: How to Learn Math

Here’s an interesting summer learning opportunity for homeschooling parents and classroom teachers alike. Stanford Online is offering a free summer course from math education professor and author Jo Boaler:

Boaler’s book is not required for the course, but it’s a good read and should be available through most library loan systems.

## Quotable: Learning the Math Facts

feature photo above by USAG- Humphreys via flickr (CC BY 2.0)

During off-times, at a long stoplight or in grocery store line, when the kids are restless and ready to argue for the sake of argument, I invite them to play the numbers game.

“Can you tell me how to get to twelve?”

My five year old begins, “You could take two fives and add a two.”

“Take sixty and divide it into five parts,” my nearly-seven year old says.

“You could do two tens and then take away a five and a three,” my younger son adds.

Eventually we run out of options and they begin naming numbers. It’s a simple game that builds up computational fluency, flexible thinking and number sense. I never say, “Can you tell me the transitive properties of numbers?” However, they are understanding that they can play with numbers.

I didn’t learn the rules of baseball by filling out a packet on baseball facts. Nobody held out a flash card where, in isolation, I recited someone else’s definition of the Infield Fly Rule. I didn’t memorize the rules of balls, strikes, and how to get someone out through a catechism of recitation.

## Conversational Math

The best way for children to build mathematical fluency is through conversation. For more ideas on discussion-based math, check out these posts:

## Learning the Math Facts

For more help with learning and practicing the basic arithmetic facts, try these tips and math games:

## How To Master Quadratic Equations

feature photo above by Junya Ogura via flickr (CC BY 2.0)

A couple of weeks ago, James Tanton launched a wonderful resource: a free online course devoted to quadratic equations. (And he promises more topics to come.)

Kitten and I have been working through the lessons, and she loves it!

We’re skimming through pre-algebra in our regular lessons, but she has enjoyed playing around with simple algebra since she was in kindergarten. She has a strong track record of thinking her way through math problems, and earlier this year she invented her own method for solving systems of equations with two unknowns. I would guess her background is approximately equal to an above-average algebra 1 student near the end of the first semester.

After few lessons of Tanton’s course, she proved — within the limits of experimental error — that a catenary (the curve formed by a hanging chain) cannot be described by a quadratic equation. Last Friday, she easily solved the following equations:

$\left ( x+4 \right )^2 -1=80$

and:

$w^2 + 90 = 22 w - 31$

and (though it took a bit more thought):

$4x^2 + 4x + 4 = 172$

We’ve spent less than half an hour a day on the course, as a supplement to our AoPS Pre-Algebra textbook. We watch each video together, pausing occasionally so she can try her hand at an equation before listening to Tanton’s explanation. Then (usually the next day) she reads the lesson and does the exercises on her own. So far, she hasn’t needed the answers in the Companion Guide to Quadratics, but she did use the “Dots on a Circle” activity — and knowing that she has the answers available helps her feel more independent.