Making Sense of Arithmetic

Homeschoolers have an advantage in teaching math: As our students grow, our own understanding of math grows with them because we see how the ideas build on each other.

This is especially true for those of us with large families. We pass through the progression of concepts with each student, and every pass lays down another layer in our own minds.

If you’d like to short-cut that process, check out Graham Fletcher’s Making Sense of Elementary Math video series. He’ll walk you through the topics, showing how manipulatives help build early concepts and gradually give way to abstract calculations.

“Understanding the vertical progression of mathematics is really important in the conceptual development of everyone’s understanding. This whole Making Sense Series has truly forced me to be a better teacher.”

— Graham Fletcher

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Math You Can Play Combo in Paperback and Ebook

If you’re interested in helping children learn math, I have special offer just for you:

  • Save 20% off the individual ebooks or 35% off the paperback prices when you buy a combined 2-books-in-1 edition featuring the first two books in the Math You Can Play series together.

The 42 kid-tested games are simple to learn, quick to play, and require minimal preparation. Most use common household items such as cards or dice.

Free Online Preview

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“Although the cover says games for young learners, the beauty of this book is that most of the games can easily be scaled up for older kids, teens, and even adults. My youngest is four and my oldest is 14, and I will be pulling games for all of them out of this book!

“I appreciate that most of the games are low floor, high ceiling – easy for a child to access, but can be played at a higher level through strategy or slight alterations to the rules. These are not drills disguised as games, but activities that require problem solving and strategy as well as calculation.”

Kindle customer review

Continue reading Math You Can Play Combo in Paperback and Ebook

New Fantasy Adventure Novel by Homeschooled Teen Author

If you or your children enjoy clean fantasy tales, check out the new installment in my daughter’s serial quest adventure The Riddled Stone, now available at many online bookstores.

Click here to see the whole series.

How Can a Knight Fight Magic?

Betrayed

Trained by the greatest knight in North Raec, Sir Arnold Fredrico dreamed of valiant deeds. Save the damsel. Serve the king.

Dreams change. Now the land teeters at the brink of war. As a fugitive with a price on his head, Arnold struggles to protect his friends.

But his enemy wields more power than the young knight can imagine.

Free Online Preview

4stars 2016-01-08
238 pages, ebook: $3.99, paperback: $14.99.

Buy now at:
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Join the Fun: Math & Magic Virtual Book Club

Math-Magic-WonderlandEleven weeks of mathematical playtime kicks off this week over at Learners in Bloom blog.

Each week, we’ll be playing with the math, language, and logic topics found in a single chapter. I’ll be posting ideas for extension activities, videos demonstrating the concepts for the week, and additional resources. I’m really excited for the opportunity to share all the extra ideas that have been floating around my brain which I didn’t have room to include in the book (as in Marco Polo’s famous words: “I did not tell half of what I saw.”)

— Lilac Mohr

Here’s a Quick Taste of Week One

This Week’s Activities

Lilac’s blog post includes a full schedule for the eleven-week book club, featuring plenty of classic math puzzlers to play with. Here are the topics for this week.

  • Read Chapter 1: Mrs. Magpie’s Manual
  • Alliteration
  • Memorizing digits of Pi
  • Palindromes
  • Calculating your age on other planets

It looks like a lot of fun. I highly recommend the book (read my review), and I’m sure you and your children will enjoy discovering math and magic with Lulu and Elizabeth.

Check it out: Math & Magic in Wonderland Virtual Book Club, Week One.

Puzzle: Exploding Dots

I’m planning ahead for my fall semester homeschool co-op math class. Definitely going to try this with the kids…

Encourage your children to have some fun this week with this Exploding Dots math puzzle from The Global Math Project. What do they notice? Does it make them wonder?

More Explosive Math

You may recognize the connection between Exploding Dots and binary numbers. Or not — the puzzle is accessible to people at almost any age and level of mathematical sophistication.

But what I find amazing is that this puzzle can help us understand all sorts of topics in elementary arithmetic and algebra. So cool!

If you’d like to investigate Exploding Dots in depth, check out James Tanton’s free G’Day Math online course.