“Play and rigor support each other.
“When students are invited to play with math, they learn more deeply, more robustly, and remember more consistently.
“Play is promoted as something that can engage kids and give them a more positive attitude about school, but it’s easy to assume that it’s not useful for learning, when in reality the opposite is true:
“The student who is playing tends to be the student who is learning most deeply.”
—Dan Finkel, Math for Love newsletter
“We know that algorithms are amazing human achievements, but they are not good teaching tools because mimicking step-by-step procedures can actually trap students into using less sophisticated reasoning than the problems are intended to develop.”
— Pam Harris, Math Is Figure-Out-Able Podcast
Whether you work with a math curriculum or take a less-traditional route to learning, do not be satisfied with mere pencil-and-paper competence. Instead, work on building your children’s mental math skills, because mental calculation forces a child to understand arithmetic at a much deeper level than is required by traditional pencil-and-paper methods.
I continue to dig myself out of the avalanche of tasks that built up during the years that I spent mostly down south with my mom as she was weakening.
But here are two tidbits of mathy fun that came across my desk recently, which I think you’ll enjoy…
“If you stay with meaningful mental arithmetic longer, you will find that your child, if she is average, can do problems much more advanced than the level listed for her grade. You will find that she likes arithmetic more.
“And when she does get to abstractions, she will understand them better.
“She will not need two or three years of work in primary grades to learn how to write out something like a subtraction problem with two-digit numbers. She can learn that in a few moments of time, if you just wait.”
—Ruth Beechick, An Easy Start in Arithmetic
ALL my math game books are on sale now at the Playful Math Store.
What a great way to prepare for a summer of mathematical play!
We were eclectic homeschoolers back in the Dark Ages before there was an internet. Our primary curriculum was the public library.
As we went along, I noticed how many of our homeschooling friends felt uncomfortable with math, and even hated or feared the subject.
Math anxiety runs rampant in Western culture. By one researcher’s estimate, more than 90% of adults experience some level of math anxiety — that is, discomfort, avoidance, and even emotional pain when faced with a math calculation.
So I became a sort of “math evangelist” in the homeschooling community, spreading the news that we can find beauty and fun even in math.
If you’re into math education — or just curious about how learning math could possibly be fun — you’ll definitely want to check out the latest edition of the Playful Math Carnival.
It’s a collection of awesome blog posts curated by John Golden and published on the Math Hombre website:
The whole point of the carnival is to show that math doesn’t have to be tedious or repetitive. Through a bunch of fun and engaging posts, we celebrate math that’s playful, creative, and totally relevant to everyday life.
Because what could be more relevant than having fun while we learn?
In this edition, you’ll find everything from math puzzles and games to humor and much more — even an interesting math art game.
So if you want to mix up your math teaching and make it more enjoyable for your students (and for yourself), definitely check out the Playful Math Carnival. Happy reading!
On a friend’s blog, I found this delightful letter written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson to a young man named Wilton Cox.
The pseudonym Lewis Carroll comes from an alteration of the Latinized name Carolus (for Charles) and the replacement of Lutwidge with Lewis.
One of the best ways we can help our children learn mathematics (or anything else) is to be lifelong learners ourselves.
Here are a few stories to read as you sip your morning brew. . .
On May 5, we celebrate one of the rarest math holidays: Square Root Day, 5/5/25.
Here are a few ideas for playing math with squares and roots.
