Playing With Math: Stories from Math Circles, Homeschoolers, and Passionate Teachers

Update: The crowdfunding campaign is now closed and the book is in the final stages. It should be headed to the printer soon. Check the Playing With Math homepage for publication and ordering information.

There’s a problem: Most people don’t like math. Why is that? Perhaps it has something to do with the way math is taught in school. As a teacher to my own kids and mentor to homeschooling parents, I’ve been fighting math anxiety for decades.

This book is one part of the solution.

Playing With Math: Stories from Math Circles, Homeschoolers, and Passionate Teachers features more than thirty authors who tell delightful stories of learning to appreciate math and of sharing their enthusiasm with their communities, families, or students. After every chapter is a puzzle, game, or activity to get you and your kids playing with math, too.

You can read a couple of excerpts at PlayingWithMath.org:

• Why play with math? Because play is the best way to learn, from the Introduction to Playing with Math
• Becoming Invisible, by Bob Kaplan and friends

Whether you love math and want to share it with your kids, or whether you fear and loathe math and need help getting over that hurdle so you won’t pass your fear on, Playing With Math will encourage you to see math more deeply and play with it more freely.

I’ve been waiting for this book for years, and I’m thrilled to see it finally come together. As I read the advance copy (review coming soon!), I am amazed at how many different ways there are to think about math. Each writer has a new perspective and unique insight, and my quotes journal is filling up with inspiration.

A Word from the Editor

The idea of crowd-funding may be new to you. Here’s how it works:

Today is the first day of our crowd-funding campaign. For a contribution of $25, we’ll send you a book as soon as it’s printed.

You can contribute anything from $1 to $5000 (with rewards at each contribution level) to help us pay for our illustrators, editors, page layout person, and printing. This is our way of asking for community support for this book as part of the production process. We hope to build lots of energy around the ideas in the book through this campaign.

Besides contributing, here’s another way you can help: Think of five friends who would enjoy this book.

• Do you have friends who get frustrated helping their kids with math homework?
• Or who teach young kids but don’t feel comfortable with math themselves?
• Do you have friends who enjoy math?
• Or who want ideas to share with the kids in their lives?
• Do you know someone who might want to start a math circle?

Would you send them a quick message, to let them know we’re here?

I’m hoping for the power of exponential growth with this. Our outrageous goal is to change the way people all over this country, and maybe even the world, think about math. If you each send this to five friends who might enjoy the book, and each of them sends it to five friends, and each of them … Well, pretty soon we cover the world, right?

In fact, if we kept it going through eleven steps, that would make 5 to the 11th power, or over 40 million people. Does Sue dream big? Yep.

— Sue VanHattum