Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math

Podcast: Math as a Nature Walk

Posted on May 19, 2021October 14, 2024 by Denise Gaskins

Pam Barnhill interviewed me for the Your Morning Basket podcast. We had a great talk. I think you’ll enjoy it:

YMB #94 Math in Morning Time: A Conversation with Denise Gaskins

“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

Go Listen to the Interview

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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.

Historical Future Fantasy Time Travel

Posted on May 6, 2021May 5, 2021 by Denise Gaskins

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!

Click Here for Details

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.

Playful Math Carnival 146 via Find the Factors

Posted on May 3, 2021May 2, 2021 by Denise Gaskins

Check out the latest carnival of playful math:

Playful Math Carnival 146

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

Help Us Keep the Carnival Going

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.

Homeschooling? Check Out These Math Goodies

Posted on April 30, 2021November 24, 2025 by Denise Gaskins

How to Homeschool Math: A long page full of my best tips on homeschooling math in a low-stress, creative, playful way. No matter which curriculum you use—unschoolers, too!

Get regular email updates with playful math activity ideas and other fun tidbits when you join my email newsletter.

My Let’s Play Math Sampler ebook contains short excerpts from my most popular books. You can get it for free!

Notice, Wonder, Create

Posted on April 15, 2021September 29, 2023 by Denise Gaskins

Many homeschooling parents dream of a mathematical magic bullet — a game, app, or book that will help their children learn math and enjoy it.

As in life, so also in math, there is no magic solution.

Do you want your children to learn math and enjoy it? Teach them to be Math Makers.

When they create their own math, students build deep, personal connections to math concepts. They think about the relationships between numbers, shapes, and patterns. Math becomes personal.

Toys, hobbies, favorite stories — all can be fodder for math creation.

Where Do Math Makers Get Ideas?

Let the child choose something to think about.

Make an “I Notice” list. How does that item relate to math? What patterns or shapes can you see?

Or how would the story characters use numbers in their daily lives? Would they cook, or go shopping? Might they build something? Would they decorate it with a design? What would they count or measure?

Make an “I Wonder” list. How many different ways might you turn the things you noticed into questions? What else might you ask?

Then turn one of your noticings or wonderings into a math story, poem, puzzle, drawing, or game. Create your own math. Share your creation with family and friends.

Now Get Published

Join the Student Math Makers team. We’d love to add your math creation to our collection and share it with viewers all around the world!

Download a Math Makers Invitation and Submission Form below:

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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.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

Math Makers: Write a Poem

Posted on April 13, 2021July 9, 2021 by Denise Gaskins

Last week, I mentioned my new project, the Student Math Makers Gallery where children and teens can share their original math creations with the world.

So this week, I’m offering inspiration to get your children’s creative juices flowing.

Let’s Write Math Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, and it’s also Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month.

What better way to celebrate than writing math poetry?

Write a poem about a math concept or idea, using your favorite style of verse.

Or write a poem about any subject, using a mathematical constraint.

Or both: write a poem about math, constrained by math.

Here are some examples…

Continue reading Math Makers: Write a Poem

New! Your Student Can Be a Math Maker

Posted on April 8, 2021September 20, 2023 by Denise Gaskins

When children create their own math, they build a deep understanding of mathematical concepts and relationships.

And it’s fun!

So take a break from your normal math program to play with creative math. Students can:

Make up their own math game.
Write a story or poem.
Draw a comic.
Pose a problem.
Create math art.
Think up a challenge question.
Or write a puzzle.

Check Out the Gallery

We have a few entries already in the Student Math Makers Gallery.

Click Here To Visit the Gallery

Join the Student Math Makers

We’d love to add your students’ math to our collection and share it with viewers all around the world!

To submit a math creation, download a Math Makers Invitation and Submission Form below:

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This blog is reader-supported.

If you’d like to help fund the blog on an on-going basis, then please head to my Patreon page.

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.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

Playful Math Carnival 145 via Math Hombre

Posted on April 2, 2021April 1, 2021 by Denise Gaskins

Check out the latest carnival of playful math:

Playful Math Carnival 145

John put together this wonderful collection of mathematical games, art projects, books, math essays, puzzles, and more.

Click Here to Read the Carnival Blog

Final (?) Lockdown Ebook Sale

Posted on March 23, 2021December 30, 2024 by Denise Gaskins

Would anyone have guessed we’d still be under pandemic social restrictions after a year?

Certainly not me!

And now that spring is in the air … Well, at least it is in the northern hemisphere. Would that be called “Up Yonder,” as opposed to “Down Under”? … Anyway, whatever you call it, everyone is getting antsy. We’re all ready to be set free, whenever our governments give in.

To help your family keep busy through the final (we hope!) lockdowns, my publisher is offering a 30% discount coupon on everything at our Tabletop Academy Press online store.

That includes all my math books and playful activity guides, plus my daughter’s fantasy fiction epic, The Riddled Stone.

Enter STAYSAFE2021 at checkout.
(Expires March 31, 2021.)

Shop Now

Prealgebra & Geometry Games Now Available

Posted on February 23, 2021December 30, 2024 by Denise Gaskins

Publication Day!

Prealgebra & Geometry: Math Games for Middle School hits the online bookstores today.

Check Your Favorite Store

You can prepare your children for high school math by playing with positive and negative integers, number properties, mixed operations, algebraic functions, coordinate geometry, and more. Prealgebra & Geometry features 41 kid-tested games, offering a variety of challenges for students in 4–9th grades and beyond.

A true understanding of mathematics requires more than the ability to memorize procedures. This book helps your children learn to think mathematically, giving them a strong foundation for future learning.

And don’t worry if you’ve forgotten all the math you learned in school. I’ve included plenty of definitions and explanations throughout the book. It’s like having a painless math refresher course as you play.

Continue reading Prealgebra & Geometry Games Now Available