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It’s Almost Gone

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
Kickstarter Sample Games Download

“Denise’s books are always the first math books I recommend to parents. I have used them both with co-ops and at home, and I couldn’t be more thrilled for her latest book, Prealgebra & Geometry Games, because there is SUCH a need for games at this level! I could even scale down many of the games for my second grader. Middle school moms and those with math loving kids of any age, check this out!”

—Casey Ogg Maupin
Big Juicy Conversations about Math (Facebook group)

UPDATE: The Kickstarter deals have ended, but my playful math books are still available through your favorite online store or by special order at your local bookshop. (Except for the Prealgebra & Geometry Games book, scheduled for publication in early 2021. Sign up for my email list to get the latest news.)

Continue reading It’s Almost Gone

The Best Math Game Ever

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

The Substitution Game features low-floor, high-ceiling cooperative play that works with any age (or with a mixed-age group) — and you can use it while distance learning, too. It’s great for building algebraic thinking.

Excerpted from my new book, Prealgebra & Geometry: Math Games for Middle School. Look for it at your favorite online bookstore.

The Substitution Game

Math Concepts: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, order of operations, integers, fractions, equivalence and substitution.

Players: any number (a cooperative game).

Equipment: whiteboard and markers (preferred) or pencil and paper to share. Calculator optional.

Continue reading The Best Math Game Ever

Morning Coffee – 24 August 2020

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
Morning Coffee image

One of the best ways we can help our children learn mathematics (or anything else) is to always be learning ourselves.

Here are a few stories to read with your morning coffee this week…

“We are all mathematicians. We all have the power to notice, describe, and generalize patterns. You have all had this ability since birth. If we believe this then every day we must plan lessons that allow students to act as mathematicians. We must put something in front of our students to notice. We must put something in front of our students to describe, to generalize.”

—Sara VanDerWerf
What is Math? What do Mathematicians do?

Continue reading Morning Coffee – 24 August 2020

Keeping Busy

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Since I started a blog streak in early August, I thought I’d see how long I can keep it going.

So this is what’s called in the industry a “placeholder” post. It keeps the blog streak live, even though I really don’t have anything to say.

In addition to working on my Prealgebra & Geometry Games index and finishing up the math activity booklets, I’ve been getting to know Mariah — taking long walks, and just plain having doggy fun.

Friday night, we discovered that she loves to fetch tennis balls — although she’s not so keen on the idea of giving them back so we can throw them again.

Oh, and she can catch a treat in the air. Smart dog!

Journaling Pages

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

This afternoon, I’ve been working on the printable pdf math activity booklets I’ll be sending out as stretch goals to the backers of my Math You Can Play Kickstarter campaign.

Some of the booklets include dot grid pages for student journaling.

I love dot grid pages for writing because I can start a line anywhere on the page, and the dots help me keep things in line. (They’re also great for doodling.)

As students wrestle their thoughts into shape and create explanations, they do the same sort of work that mathematicians do every day. It’s difficult for children (or anyone) to pin down a thought and put it into words. But it’s great practice for life.

Journaling is a great practice for adult learners, too — and don’t we all want to be lifelong learners?

So I thought I’d share the journaling pages with you all, in case you’d like to get your children writing about math. There are three styles, ranging from plain to ornate parchment. Enjoy!

Download the Journaling Pages

UPDATE: The Kickstarter deals have ended, but my playful math books are still available through your favorite online store or by special order at your local bookshop. (Except for the Prealgebra & Geometry Games book, scheduled for publication in early 2021. Sign up for my email list to get the latest news.)

How Mathematics Works

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

The full quote, as it appears in my new book:

Make a conjecture. A conjecture is a statement that you think might be true.

For example, you might make a conjecture that “All odd numbers are…” How would you finish that sentence?

Make another conjecture. And another. Does thinking about your conjectures make you wonder about math?

Can you think of any way to test your conjectures, to discover if they will always be true?

This is how mathematics works. Mathematicians notice something interesting about certain numbers, shapes, or ideas. They play around and explore how those relate to other ideas. After collecting a set of interesting things, they think about ways to organize them. They wonder about patterns and connections. They make conjectures and try to imagine ways to test them.

And mathematicians talk with one another and compare their ideas. In real life, math is a very social game.

—Denise Gaskins
Prealgebra & Geometry: Math Games for Middle School

Excerpted from my new book, Prealgebra & Geometry: Math Games for Middle School. Look for it at your favorite online bookstore.

CREDITS: “Three girls counting” photo by Charlein Gracia on Unsplash.

Language and Math

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Still working on my Prealgebra & Geometry Games book. I’m amazed at how much of learning math is really about language.

With the current layout, the book will be 250+ pages long, depending on how the index turns out. A total of 41 games plus four math investigation activities. I’ve defined more than 100 vocabulary words — so averaging more than two new math words per game.

Of course, several of these are words (or at least concepts) students will have learned before. But a large part of prealgebra is consolidating previous ideas and mastering their names (sum, quotient, factor, multiple, etc.) before moving on to apply them in algebra class.

But it’s not all review! There’s a cool game about polar coordinates, a rabbit trail into combinatorics, and plenty of other challenges to keep students learning.

And plenty of clear definitions for adult readers who have long ago forgotten all the math terms they learned in school.

Prealgebra & Geometry: Math Games for Middle School is scheduled for publication in early 2021. Sign up for my newsletter to get updates.

Math Conversation Starter

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

(Click for larger image.)

What do you see?

Does it make you wonder?

How is perspective art similar to the isometric drawing in yesterday’s post? How is it different?

You may also enjoy:

CREDITS: William Hogarth – “The importance of knowing perspective” (Absurd perspectives), Engraving on paper. From Wikimedia Commons.

How to Draw Minecraft Blocks

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Running out of time on my Math You Can Play Kickstarter, so I better get to work on that Kickstarter Special Edition math-art book I promised to all the backers as a bonus reward.

Today I’m working on the Isometric Drawing and Impossible Figures section, because my co-op math classes had so much fun learning how to draw those.

Here’s a starter image on how to draw Minecraft blocks. At first I called them “isometric blocks” — but changing the name to “Minecraft” made the students really excited to learn. I’m not sure whether I like the pencil sketch, or if I should remake the illustrations on the computer…

Key steps:

  1. Make a Y.
  2. Turn it into an M.
  3. Slant down for the bottom.
  4. Slant up for the top.

Student drawings from my co-op classes.

The most common problem for beginners is that they try to make the base straight. They know a block can sit on a table, so the bottom has to be flat, right? But once students get a feel for how it goes, they can really take off and have fun.

UPDATE: The Kickstarter deals have ended, but my playful math books are still available through your favorite online store or by special order at your local bookshop. (Except for the Prealgebra & Geometry Games book, scheduled for publication in early 2021. Sign up for my email list to get the latest news.)

Morning Coffee – 17 August 2020

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Morning Coffee image

One of the best ways we can help our children learn mathematics (or anything else) is to always be learning ourselves.

Here are a few stories to read with your morning coffee this week:

“A strategy is how you mess with the numbers, how you use relationships and connections between numbers to solve a problem. A model is a representation of your strategy, the way the strategy looks visibly. Modeling your strategy makes your thinking more clear to others because they can see the thinking and the relationships that went into your process.”

—Pam Harris
Strategies vs. Models

  • Do you have preschool or elementary students? Michael Minas has a great collection of games on his blog. Easy to learn and full of mathematical thinking.

“Doing mathematics like this deprives students of, well, let’s be honest, mathematics itself. We need to get to the answer faster. We need to move on. No time to stumble around rabbit holes. There is a curriculum to cover.”

—Sunil Singh
Our Fear of Being Lost Devalues The Beauty of Mathematics

CREDITS: Feature photo (top) by Kira auf der Heide via Unsplash. “Morning Coffee” post format inspired by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader.