Check out the new playful math blog carnival at Math Mama Writes blog. Sue put together a great collection of geometry constructions, story problem ideas, teaching tips, and more:
Teen author Teresa GaskinsDo you enjoy binge reading tales of epic fantasy?
Love exploring magical worlds wracked by the struggle of good against evil?
Then don’t miss Teresa Gaskins’s four-book serial adventure, The Riddled Stone.
Those of us who read her earlier books have waited eagerly to hear how the story ends. Two years longer than we hoped, since she had to squeeze in her writing between calculus exams and college essays.
But finally, it’s done!
Now a homeschool graduate, she wrote the last few scenes right at the tail end of her nineteenth year — which means these will be Teresa’s final books as a teen author.
Check them out…
The Riddled Stone: Omnibus Edition, Four Books in One
How can a knight fight magic?
Christopher Fredrico loved the quiet life of a scholar-in-training. Plenty of spare time to spend with his friends. But the night Crown Prince Tyler came to dinner, everything changed.
Falsely accused of stealing a magical artifact and banished under threat of death, Chris leaves the only home he knows.
But as he and his three friends travel towards the coast, they find a riddle that may save a kingdom — or cost them their lives.
Discover the full story of The Riddled Stone, complete in one volume.
A gift she never wanted. A curse she can’t escape.
Alone in the dark, Nora of Yorc feels the dungeon walls pressing in. Even worse, the duke’s sorcery weaves itself around her, unseen and deadly. But as the spell tightens, shy, fragile Nora breaks — and something new takes her place.
Or something old beyond memory.
Nora joined this quest to help her friends. But can she stop herself before the wildness within destroys them all?
Find out in Revealed, the exciting conclusion of Teresa Gaskins’s four-book serial fantasy adventure, The Riddled Stone.
“There are some obvious protagonists and some obvious villains, but Gaskins creates a nice ambiguity around several of the key characters. The plot itself is interesting and engaging with multiple levels of motivation that drive it along.”
“I enjoyed the book and I am absolutely amazed at how such a young author can write so well. I definitely see her going far in her writing career, and I can’t wait to see what stories she publishes next.”
CREDITS: Feature image of Neuschwanstein Castle, Schwangau, Germany, (top) by William West via Unsplash. Author photo by Christina Vernon, MelliRu.com.
One of the most common questions I get from parents who want to help their children enjoy math is, “Where do we start?”
My favorite answer: “Play games!”
Math games meet children each at their own level. The child who sits at the head of the class can solidify skills. The child who lags behind grade level can build fluency and gain confidence.
And (as Peggy Kaye pointed out in her book Games for Math) both will learn something even more important — that hard mental effort can be fun.
Now I’ve put together a short, inexpensive book to help families begin playing with math.
Let’s Play Math Sampler: 10 Family-Favorite Games for Learning Math Through Play contains short excerpts from my most popular books, including a preview of two games from my work-in-progress Prealgebra & Geometry Games.
“Denise Gaskins is that sound voice of reason that comes into my head when I get agitated teaching. This isn’t performance — this is play. My kids aren’t on trial, they are learning to learn.”
—Sonya Post
“By exploring math in a playful way, your kids will be happy to learn and will discover an enjoyment of math in the process. You might even have fun, too! ”
Each monthly Playful Math Education Blog Carnival brings you a great new collection of puzzles, math conversations, crafts, teaching tips, and all sorts of mathy fun.
It’s like a free online magazine of mathematical adventures. Enjoy!
William put together this carnival of 10 evergreen links — helpful and inspiring no matter when you read them — featuring chess statistics, a horse riddle, fish that count, and more.
Do you have a favorite blog post about math activities, games, lessons, or hands-on fun? The Playful Math Blog Carnival would love to feature your article!
We welcome math topics from preschool through the first year of calculus. Old posts are welcome, as long as they haven’t been published in past editions of this carnival.
To submit a blog article for consideration, fill out this form:
Have you noticed a new math blogger on your block that you’d like to introduce to the rest of us? Feel free to submit another blogger’s post in addition to your own. Beginning bloggers are often shy about sharing, but like all of us, they love finding new readers.
CREDITS: Carnival photo (top) by Scott Trento on Unsplash.
Check out the new playful math blog carnival at Life Through A Mathematician’s Eyes blog. Ioana put together a great collection of math games, activities, and teaching tips:
My goals are to continue playing with math (1) in my homeschool co–op classes and (2) on this blog — and (3) hopefully to publish a couple of new books as well.
My favorite way to celebrate any new year is by playing the Year Game. It’s a prime opportunity for players of all ages to fulfill the two most popular New Year’s Resolutions: spending more time with family and friends, and getting more exercise.
So grab a partner, slip into your workout clothes, and pump up those mental muscles!
Rules of the Game
Use the digits in the year 2019 to write mathematical expressions for the counting numbers 1 through 100. The goal is adjustable: Young children can start with looking for 1-10, middle grades with 1-25.
You must use all four digits. You may not use any other numbers.
Solutions that keep the year digits in 2-0-1-9 order are preferred, but not required.
You may use a decimal point to create numbers such as .2, .02, etc., but you cannot write 0.02 because we only have one zero in this year’s number.
You may create multi-digit numbers such as 10 or 201 or .01, but we prefer solutions that avoid them.
My Special Variations on the Rules
You MAY use the overhead-bar (vinculum), dots, or brackets to mark a repeating decimal. But students and teachers beware: you can’t submit answers with repeating decimals to Math Forum.
You may NOT use a double factorial, n!! = the product of all integers from 1 to n that have the same parity (odd or even) as n. The Math Forum allows them, but I feel much more creative when I can wrangle a solution without invoking them.
For many years mathematicians, scientists, engineers and others interested in mathematics have played “year games” via e-mail and in newsgroups. We don’t always know whether it is possible to write expressions for all the numbers from 1 to 100 using only the digits in the current year, but it is fun to try to see how many you can find.
Hapollonian Holiday Greetings from my co-op class kids, and best wishes for a grace-filled holiday season.
Do you know of any great math-related seasonal games, crafts, or activities I missed? Please add them to the comments section below.
As you scroll through the links below, you find several puzzle graphics from the wonderful Visual Patterns website.
Use them as conversation-starters with your kids: What do you notice? How does each pattern grow?
For older students: Can you write a formula to describe how each pattern? What will it look at stage 43?
Pattern #7, Trees
A Bit of Fun
Setting the mood: Enjoy this bit of seasonal fidgeting from Vi Hart. If you don’t understand some of the references, that’s normal! Pick a phrase, Google it, and enjoy the fun of learning something new.
Every year, some of my favorite websites offer a seasonal selection of activities to encourage your children’s (and your own!) mathematical creativity, one for each day in the run-up to Christmas.
Colleen Young updates the list every year, so check out her pages:
Clarissa (@c0mplexnumber) demonstrates how to make beautiful, challenging origami snowflakes. She recommends beginners try the first few folds — which create a pretty cool design on their own. Let it Snow…
K (@Ms_Kmp) reviews the distributive property with Algebra snowflakes and links to a make-your-own puzzle generator for math review at any level. Or download one of Craig’s (@mrbartonmaths) pre-made Tarsia Jigsaws.
Speaking of Christmas carols, the Christmas Price Index shows the current cost for one set of each of the gifts given in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” I wonder what’s the cumulative cost of all the gifts, when you count each repetition in the song?
Alexandria Jones and her family are fictional characters from my old Mathematical Adventures newsletter. Their stories appear sporadically as I find time to transcribe them from the back-issues. You can find them all on this blog page.
Here are all the Alexandria Jones stories Christmas stories, with activity and craft ideas…
The Playful Math Carnival is like a free online magazine devoted to learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to high school. This month’s edition features articles from bloggers all across the internet.†
You’re sure to find something that will delight both you and your child.
By tradition, we start the carnival with a puzzle in honor of our 123rd edition. But if you would like to jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here to see the Table of Contents.
†Or more, depending on how you count. And on whether I keep finding things to squeeze in under the looming deadline. But if there are more, then there are certainly 36. Right?
Do the holidays mess with your schedule? They sure do mine!
Every year, we get busy. Distracted. Just can’t focus on lessons.
I love easy activities that require minimal preparation so I can pull something out and play when we’re having one of those no-energy days.
If that sounds good to you, too, then you’ll want to check out my new ebook 70+ Things To Do with a Hundred Chart: Number, Shape, and Logic Activities from Preschool to Middle School.
Long years ago, when I did workshops at homeschooling conferences, I used to share a list of seven ways to play with a hundred chart. The all-time most visited post on my blog offers 34 playful activities. Now I’ve more than doubled that total for this book.
So many ways to play! One of them is sure to be perfect for you and your children.
Take your child on a mathematical adventure with these playful, practical activities.
“It is exactly the kind of math exploration that I want to undertake with my kids.
“After reading through the book, I noticed myself making more room to trust my kids’ ability to make connections and not try to dominate by telling them how math ‘should’ work.
“An excellent way for me to move outside my math and teaching comfort zones and explore math more deeply with my kids.”
— Olisia Barron, author of ThimbleberryHome.wordpress.com
P.S.: If you have a blog and would like to host a giveaway for 70+ Things To Do with a Hundred Chart (or any of my other books), I’d be glad to provide the prize. Leave a comment below or use the contact form on my “About” page, and we’ll set up all the details.
Check out the new playful math blog carnival at Math Mama Writes blog. Sue put together a great collection of geometry constructions, story problem ideas, teaching tips, and more: 
articles from bloggers all across the internet.†
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 