Uncle Will drove in from the tree farm to drop off Alex’s cousin, Sam, so he could go to the Homeschool Math Carnival.
“Hey, Sam,” Alex said. “What’s in the sack?”
Sam smiled. “A secret puzzle.”
“Aw, c’mon,” Leon whined. “We’ll be busy with our own games at the carnival. Can’t you show us now?”
Check out Nick Johnson’s Story of the innertube as a histogram.
Celebrate Math Storytelling Day by making up and sharing math stories. Everyone loves a story, so this is a great way to motivate your children to play around with math. What might a math story involve? Patterns, logic, history, puzzles, relationships, fictional characters, … and yes, even numbers.
What story will you tell?
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Are you looking for more creative ways to play math with your kids? Check out all my books, printable activities, and cool mathy merch at Denise Gaskins’ Playful Math Store. Or join my email newsletter.
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“Math Storytelling Day” copyright © 2010 by Denise Gaskins. Image at the top of the post copyright © Nick Johnson via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
To find the latitude of your position:
To convert your latitude to a distance measurement:
[I will also add these to the original post.]
There’s a tendency for adults to label the math that they can do (such as identifying patterns, choosing between competing offers in a supermarket, and challenging statistics published by the government) as “common sense” and labeling everything they can’t do as “math” — so that being bad at math becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
— Rob Eastaway, Mike Askew
Old Dogs, New Math: Homework Help for Puzzled Parents
Still a couple of slots left in Sol’s book giveaway. I’ll be hosting a giveaway soon, too — so watch this spot!
Tomorrow, September 23, is the equinox — when night and day are equally balanced (or would be, if the sun appeared as a point, rather than a disc). If we lived on the equator, the sun would appear directly overhead at noon and would cast no shadow. Therefore, it’s a great day to perform Eratosthenes’ experiment of measuring the earth:
Maria Jones hung up the phone and collapsed at the kitchen table. She buried her head in her hands and groaned. Alex looked up from her game of Solitaire.
“Let me guess,” she said. “Can’t-Say-No Syndrome, again?”
Mrs. Jones nodded. “This time I volunteered to plan an activity for next month’s homeschool group meeting.”
Leon wandered in and pulled an apple from the fruit bowl. “Ha!” he said. “She means she volunteered us to plan an activity, right?”
Mrs. Jones smiled. “That’s my motto: When in doubt, delegate!”
Continue reading Alexandria Jones and the Mathematical Carnival
Check out the mathy blog entries in this month’s Math Teachers at Play blog carnival, hosted by Jonathan at jd2718. Topics range from preschool to high school, including songs, games and much more. Fun!
via JD2718
CurrClick is running a Talk Like a Pirate Sale through Wednesday, October 22, and they hid 20 virtual treasure chests around their website — each with a free e-book inside. I haven’t found them all, but here are a couple of preschool and early-elementary treats:
Who knows what else may be hiding in those CurrClick treasure chests? Have fun exploring!
As I was preparing for Wednesday’s Homeschool Math Club Games & Activities meeting, I remembered my old math calendars and thought, that would be a fun activity to offer. So I pulled up the files and discovered that the days of the week matched perfectly. What a cool coincidence!
So in case you missed the math calendars last year, or in case it’s been long enough that your children have forgotten, here are the “new” versions:
Umm Ahmad created an easier version for young students:
[Photo by Waponi.]
A few years ago, I had several (potentially) future engineers in our homeschool math club, and we enjoyed the challenge of MathCounts and AMC puzzles — but the current crop of local homeschool students is another story.
Last year’s contest-based club meetings dwindled to one student. Even before the recent MathCounts rule changes, I knew I needed a new plan. The final straw was Kitten, whose moaning complaint that she “hates math” has begun to drive me crazy.
So, what’s a homeschool math teacher to do?
