Multiplication Models Card Game

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

multfrac-300Update: An expanded version of this post is featured in my book Multiplication & Fractions: Math Games for Tough Topics, available now at your favorite online book dealer.

Homeschooling parents know that one of the biggest challenges for any middle-elementary math student is to master the multiplication facts. It can seem like an unending task to memorize so many facts and be able to pull them out of mental storage in any order on demand.

Too often, we are tempted to stress the rote aspect of such memory work, which makes our children lose their focus on what multiplication really means. Before practicing the times table facts, make sure your student gets plenty of practice recognizing and using the common models for multiplication.

To help your children see what multiplication looks like in real life, explore the multitude of Multiplication Models collected at the Natural Math website. Or sign up for their Multiplication Explorers Online Course.

You may want to pick up this poster and use it for ideas as you play the Tell Me a (Math) Story game. Word problems are important for children learning any new topic in math, because they give children a mental “hook” on which to hang the abstract number concepts.

And for extra practice, you can play my free card game…

Click here to continue reading.

Math Teachers at Play Blog Carnival #69 via Kids Math Teacher

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

mtap69wordle

The new Math Teachers at Play blog carnival is up for your browsing pleasure. Featured articles include activities and enrichment from preschool through high school:

“While my site focuses on elementary level math concepts, I strongly think that young kids can understand complex concepts that are not taught until much later (and I think most math teachers feel that way. Do you agree?). The Math Teachers at Play Blog Carnival can contain math concepts/topics from Pre-school to Calculus.

“This month for December’s carnival there were 12 days of Christmas entries! I put them in order starting from earliest math to the most advanced math…”

Click here to go read the Blog Carnival post at Kids Math Teacher.

2013 Advent Math from Nrich

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Click the images below to visit the Advent calendars, and your children can play with math every day until Christmas! You may also enjoy:

Primary Advent Calendar

“This Advent Calendar has a new activity for each day in the run-up to Christmas. All the activities are based on the theme of Planet Earth.”

advent1

Secondary Advent Calendar

“Behind each door of the Advent Calendar is one of our favourite activities with videos. Watch and enjoy!”

advent2

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Thanksgiving at the Trolls

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good;
His love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say this —
those He redeemed from the hand of the foe,
those He gathered from the lands,
frome east and west, from north and south.
…
Whoever is wise, let him heed these things
and consider the great love of the Lord.

— Psalm 107:1-3 and 43

[Feature photo above by Martha_chapa95 (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr. Quotation from Holy Bible, New International Version, (c)1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.]

Pondering Large Numbers

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Feature photo above by Paolo Camera (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr.]

Half of our students were missing from this month’s homeschool teen math circle, but I challenged the three who did show up to wrap their brains around some large numbers. Human intuition serves us well for the numbers we normally deal with from day to day, but it has a hard time with numbers outside our experience. We did a simple yet fascinating activity.

First, draw a line across a page of your notebook. Label one end of the line $20 (the amount of money I had in my purse), and mark the other end as $1 trillion (rough estimate of the US government’s yearly overspending, the annual deficit):

large-numbers-baseline

  • Where on that line do you think $1 million would be?

Go ahead, try it! The activity has a much greater impact when you really do it, rather than just reading. Don’t try to over-think this, just mark wherever it feels right to you.

The kids were NOT eager to commit themselves, but I waited in silence until everyone made a mark.

  • Okay, now, where do you think $1 billion would be?

This was a bit easier. Once they had committed to a place for a million, they went about that much farther down the line to mark a billion.

Continue reading Pondering Large Numbers

Math Teachers at Play #68 via Mathematical Mischief

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

CERDEC Math and Science Summer Camp, 2013

[Photo by U.S. Army RDECOM CERDEC (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr.]

The Math Teachers at Play blog carnival is a monthly blogging round-up shared at a different blog each month, featuring posts from parents, teachers, homeschoolers, and students — anyone who is interested in playing around with school-level (preschool to pre-college) or recreational math.

This month’s edition is ready for your browsing pleasure:

Enjoy!

Good morning, everybody! This month’s edition of Math Teachers at Play is edition number 68. Also known as edition number {{2}^{2}}({{2}^{4}+1}). Or edition 31+37 or edition 7+61…. Alrighty, so… did you know that 68 is a happy number? That’s right, it’s not unhappy, it quite likes the way it is.

There’s certain numbers that exist that are ‘happy’ numbers. This is because the sum of the square of their digits is equal to 1. So, for 68, the two digits are 6 and 8. Adding the squares, we’re given {{6}^{2}}+{{8}^{2}}, which equates to 100. Adding the square of each of the digits makes 1, which is happy!

  • Can you find some more happy numbers?
    I’ll give you a hint – the first one is 1.

Anyway, back to the carnival. This carnival features 11 articles – smaller than last time, but still just as awesome and creative as ever….

Click here to go read the whole carnival: 11 great ideas for teaching math!
[By the way, did you notice? 11 is a happy number, too.]

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