Dan Finkel, creator of the Tiny Polka Dot and Prime Climb games, is running a new Kickstarter campaign.
If your children struggle with multiplication math facts, or if you’re planning to teach the times tables next year, you may want to check it out.
And do it today — Kickstarter campaigns are limited-time deals!
Check out the latest carnival of playful math:
Ioana put together this April collection of mathematical activities. She writes:
“When I first agreed to do this Carnival, I could not imagine that I will be writing and preparing for it in lockdown. But here we are, a strange situation with a stressful environment. With this in mind, we have to hope for the better. With this in mind, the Carnival is split into Learning Resources & Activities and Relaxation Time. With all that is happening around us, we need to look for activities that relax us.”
Continue reading Playful Math Carnival 137 @ Life Through A Mathematician’s Eyes
For children, learning always begins with play. This is how they wrap their minds around new ideas and make them their own.
“There should be no element of slavery in learning. Enforced exercise does no harm to the body, but enforced learning will not stay in the mind. So avoid compulsion, and let your children’s lessons take the form of play.”
—Plato, The Republic
If we want our children to enjoy learning math, our first job is to establish an attitude of playfulness.
This is especially important for anyone working with a discouraged child or a child who is afraid of math. The best way to help a discouraged child is to put away the workbook. Try something different, fun, and challenging.
Far too many people find themselves suddenly, unexpectedly homeschooling their children. This prompts me to consider what advice I might offer after more than three decades of teaching kids at home.
Through my decades of homeschooling five kids, we lived by two rules:
Do math. Do reading.
As long as we hit those two topics each day, I knew the kids would be fine. Do some sort of mathematical game or activity. Read something from that big stack of books we collected at the library.
Conquer the basics of math and reading, then everything else will fall into place.
Check out the new playful math blog carnival at nebusresearch blog. Joseph Nebus put together a great collection of math art, puzzles, games, teaching tips, and an inspiring bit of hope in troubled times:
It’s like a free online magazine of mathematical adventures.
Enjoy!
Click here to go read the carnival blog
Past carnivals are still full of mathy treasure. See them all on Pinterest:
And if you’re a blogger, be sure to submit your blog post for next month’s carnival!
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 