I can’t believe we’re getting ready for the 5th Global Math Week. Wow!
Have your kids had a chance to play with Exploding Dots? Or Pencil Pushing, or Garden Paths? Or any of the other fun projects from the creative brain of James Tanton?
Check out the Global Math website for details and links.
Are you looking for new ways to explore math with your kids?
Would you like an easy, no-prep resource for creative problem-solving, number play, math art, word problems, mini-essays, math poetry, geometry investigations, research projects, and much more?
I’ve just launched a Kickstarter project for people to preorder my new book, 312 Things To Do with a Math Journal. It just might transform your child’s experience of math.
In a math journal, children explore their own ideas about numbers, shapes, and patterns through drawing or writing in response to a question. Journaling teaches them to see with mathematical eyes. Not just to remember what we adults tell them, but to create their own math.
Scroll down the Kickstarter project page to download the free 16-page printable “Math Journaling Sampler” file. It includes one of my all-time favorite math activities.
If you like what you see, I’d love to have your support. The more people we can get to share the project in the early days, the more likely Kickstarter will join in and promote it to new readers.
Have fun playing math with your kids!
Are you a parent who wants to help your children learn math?
Or a teacher looking for new activities to try with your students?
Or perhaps you’d like to discover for yourself the playful side of math that school never showed you?
Tune in next week to discover how to help children explore their own ideas about numbers, shapes, and patterns. Or go to the Kickstarter Preview page, where you can sign up to be notified as soon as the project launches.
Check out the latest carnival of playful math:
Each monthly Playful Math Education Blog Carnival brings you a great new collection of puzzles, math conversations, teaching tips, and all sorts of mathy fun. It’s like a free online magazine of mathematical adventures, helpful and inspiring no matter when you read them.
Kelly put together this magical collection of mathematical games, activities, art projects, hands-on fun, math storybooks, and inspiration.
Click Here to Read the Carnival Blog
The Playful Math Blog Carnival wants you!
The carnival is a joint effort. We depend on our volunteer hosts to collect blog posts and write the carnival each month.
Putting together a blog carnival can be a lot of work, but it’s a great opportunity to share the work of bloggers you admire and to discover new math-friends online. I love that part of being a host!
Classroom teachers, homeschoolers, college professors, unschoolers, or anyone who likes to play around with math — if you would like to take a turn hosting the carnival, please speak up.
I love listening to podcasts during my morning walk with the dogs. One of my favorites over the past year has been Pam Harris and Kim Montague’s Math is Figure-Out-Able podcast.
Figure-out-able. What a great word!
Figure-out-able sums up what I mean when I tell parents that math is “applied common sense.” Kids can use the things they know to figure out things they don’t yet know.
And figuring things out like that is fun, like a mental game where we play with the ideas of numbers, shapes, and patterns.
Usually, the podcast targets teachers, and the hosts try to show how they can help students learn to mathematize — to think mathematically. Over the past few weeks, however, Pam and Kim have been talking directly to parents about how to help their children learn math.
Welcome to the 147th edition of the Playful Math Education Blog Carnival — a smorgasbord of delectable tidbits of mathy fun. It’s like a free online magazine devoted to learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to high school.
Bookmark this post, so you can take your time browsing. There’s so much playful math to enjoy!
By tradition, we start the carnival with a puzzle in honor of our 147th edition. But if you’d rather jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here to see the Table of Contents.
Christy Thomas interviewed me for her Keep Calm and Mother On podcast. We had a wonderful chat. I think you’ll enjoy it:
“School math sometimes is more stress-inducing. Real math is more freeing and more joyful, and just more interesting.
“Real mathematics is basically applied common sense.
“Real mathematics is noticing patterns, seeing connections, figuring things out.
“These are all things that you can do. You do them in other areas of your life. Real mathematics draws on those same abilities and focuses those abilities on numbers, shapes, and patterns.
“Real mathematics is about solving puzzles. It’s about creative reasoning. These are the things you want your child to understand.”
—Denise Gaskins, Real Math and Family Fun
* * *
I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Christy. If you run a math, education, or homeschooling podcast, and you’d like to have me on sometime, I’d love to hear from you!
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.
This blog is reader-supported. If you’d like to help fund the blog on an on-going basis, then please join me on Patreon for mathy inspiration, tips, and an ever-growing archive of printable activities. If you liked this post, and want to show your one-time appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal: paypal.me/DeniseGaskinsMath. If you go that route, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.
“Podcast: Real Math and Family Fun” copyright © 2021 by Denise Gaskins. Image at the top of the post copyright © Bruno Nascimento via Unsplash.com.
Pam Barnhill interviewed me for the Your Morning Basket podcast. We had a great talk. I think you’ll enjoy it:
“Let me give you this new vision. I want you to think of math as a nature walk.
“There’s this whole world of interesting things. More things, more concepts, more ideas than you and your children would ever have time to explore. And everywhere you look, there’s something cool to discover.
“If you explore this world with your children, you’re not behind. Wherever you are, you’re not behind because there is no behind. There’s only, “We’re going this direction.” Or, “Let’s move that way.” Or, “Hey, look what I found over here!”
“And as long as your children are thinking and wondering, and making sense of the math they find, they’re going to learn. They’re going to grow.
“So what you want to do is, you want to embrace this adventure of loving God with all your mind and approach math with an attitude of playful exploration.
“And you know, you’ll be surprised how much fun thinking hard can be.”
—Denise Gaskins, Math in Morning Time
* * *
I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Pam. If you run a math, education, or homeschooling podcast, and you’d like to have me on sometime, I’d love to hear from you!
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.
This blog is reader-supported. If you’d like to help fund the blog on an on-going basis, then please join me on Patreon for mathy inspiration, tips, and an ever-growing archive of printable activities.
“Podcast: Math as a Nature Walk” copyright © 2021 by Denise Gaskins. Image at the top of the post copyright © Jessica Rockowitz via Unsplash.com.
My daughter, Teresa Gaskins, has a new story out in Promise in the Gold: A Cave Creek Anthology. If you enjoy cross-genre fiction, the Cave Creek series is a fun mixture of western, science-fiction, and fantasy:
Cave Creek, Nevada—Where the Unexpected Meets the Real World
Strange, unexplained events long plagued residents of Cave Creek, a former mining town nestled in a hidden canyon north of Las Vegas.
Promise in the Gold takes the reader into the future, where people who slip through the portals create new timelines—and past, present, and future cross paths in some very weird and sometimes scary ways.
Teresa’s story is sweet, not scary. And even better, it features a cat. I think you’ll love it!
Or if you prefer traditional fantasy, check out Teresa’s epic series, The Riddled Stone.
CREDITS: Feature photo (top) by Glen Rushton via Unsplash.com.
Check out the latest carnival of playful math:
Each monthly Playful Math Education Blog Carnival brings you a great new collection of puzzles, math conversations, teaching tips, and all sorts of mathy fun. It’s like a free online magazine of mathematical adventures, helpful and inspiring no matter when you read them.
Iva put together this huge and amazing collection of mathematical games, activities, art projects, hands-on fun, math storybooks, poetry, and more.
Click Here to Read the Carnival Blog
The Playful Math Blog Carnival wants you!
The carnival is a joint effort. We depend on our volunteer hosts to collect blog posts and write the carnival each month.
Putting together a blog carnival can be a lot of work, but it’s a great opportunity to share the work of bloggers you admire and to discover new math-friends online. I love that part of being a host!
Classroom teachers, homeschoolers, college professors, unschoolers, or anyone who likes to play around with math — if you would like to take a turn hosting the carnival, please speak up.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 