One step closer to getting my long-awaited Multiplication & Fraction Games book out — I finished the printables file! At least, I hope I’ve finished. Sometimes it seems like whack-a-typo never ends…
Multiplication & Fraction Printables
Click here to download the Multiplication & Fraction Printables, featuring mathematical model cards, hundred charts, and game boards to accompany the upcoming Math You Can Play: Multiplication & Fractions book.
The Multiplication & Fractions ebook will come out sometime in November, and the paperback should follow in time for Christmas. If you’re interested, my newsletter subscribers will get a special introductory sale price whenever the book is published. Join now!
You may also want to check out:
Number Game Printables Pack
Click here to download the Number Game Printables Pack, featuring hundred charts, graph paper, and game boards from the first two Math You Can Play books.
You have permission to copy and use these game boards and worksheets in your own local classroom, home school, math circle, co-op class, etc. But you may not post them on your own website (though you can link to this post, if you like) or sell them. If you’re not sure how copyright works on the Internet, check out Daniel Scocco’s Copyright Law: 12 Dos and Don’ts.
Check out the new carnival of playful math for all ages at Arithmophobia No More blog. You’re sure to enjoy this great collection of puzzles, math conversations, crafts, teaching tips, and all sorts of mathy fun.
The carnival features prime numbers, multiplication, arithmetic puzzles, magic, word problems, picture puzzles, games, mathematical conversations, and much more.
Homeschoolers have an advantage in teaching math: As our students grow, our own understanding of math grows with them because we see how the ideas build on each other.
This is especially true for those of us with large families. We pass through the progression of concepts with each student, and every pass lays down another layer in our own minds.
If you’d like to short-cut that process, check out Graham Fletcher’s Making Sense of Elementary Math video series. He’ll walk you through the topics, showing how manipulatives help build early concepts and gradually give way to abstract calculations.
“Understanding the vertical progression of mathematics is really important in the conceptual development of everyone’s understanding. This whole Making Sense Series has truly forced me to be a better teacher.”
If you’re interested in helping children learn math, I have special offer just for you:
Save 20% off the individual ebooks or 35% off the paperback prices when you buy a combined 2-books-in-1 edition featuring the first two books in the Math You Can Play series together.
The 42 kid-tested games are simple to learn, quick to play, and require minimal preparation. Most use common household items such as cards or dice.
“Although the cover says games for young learners, the beauty of this book is that most of the games can easily be scaled up for older kids, teens, and even adults. My youngest is four and my oldest is 14, and I will be pulling games for all of them out of this book!
“I appreciate that most of the games are low floor, high ceiling – easy for a child to access, but can be played at a higher level through strategy or slight alterations to the rules. These are not drills disguised as games, but activities that require problem solving and strategy as well as calculation.”
If you or your children enjoy clean fantasy tales, check out the new installment in my daughter’s serial quest adventure The Riddled Stone, now available at many online bookstores.
Each week, we’ll be playing with the math, language, and logic topics found in a single chapter. I’ll be posting ideas for extension activities, videos demonstrating the concepts for the week, and additional resources. I’m really excited for the opportunity to share all the extra ideas that have been floating around my brain which I didn’t have room to include in the book (as in Marco Polo’s famous words: “I did not tell half of what I saw.”)
— Lilac Mohr
Here’s a Quick Taste of Week One
This Week’s Activities
Lilac’s blog post includes a full schedule for the eleven-week book club, featuring plenty of classic math puzzlers to play with. Here are the topics for this week.
Read Chapter 1: Mrs. Magpie’s Manual
Alliteration
Memorizing digits of Pi
Palindromes
Calculating your age on other planets
It looks like a lot of fun. I highly recommend the book (read my review), and I’m sure you and your children will enjoy discovering math and magic with Lulu and Elizabeth.
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.
I’m planning ahead for my fall semester homeschool co-op math class. Definitely going to try this with the kids…
Encourage your children to have some fun this week with this Exploding Dots math puzzle from The Global Math Project. What do they notice? Does it make them wonder?
More Explosive Math
You may recognize the connection between Exploding Dots and binary numbers. Or not — the puzzle is accessible to people at almost any age and level of mathematical sophistication.
But what I find amazing is that this puzzle can help us understand all sorts of topics in elementary arithmetic and algebra. So cool!
“I can’t find a home school math program my son likes. We’ve tried Singapore Math, Right Start, Saxon, and Math Mammoth. We subscribed to a month of IXL Math to keep him in practice, but he hates that, too. I know I shouldn’t have changed so many times, but this was our first year of homeschooling, and I was trying to please him. But I’m running out of things to try. Do you think Life of Fred might work?”
You’ve tried all those math programs in one year? Many people recommend that new homeschoolers take a few months off to “detox” from the classroom setting, to relax and enjoy the freedom of making their own choices. But your son might want a few months to detox from his homeschool experience.
I suggest you set aside all those books and focus on games and informal math. Try to avoid schoolish lessons until your son starts to enjoy learning for its own sake.
Check out the new carnival of playful math for all ages at Three J’s Learning blog. You’re sure to enjoy this great collection of puzzles, math conversations, crafts, teaching tips, and all sorts of mathy fun.
Are you looking for a fun book to read over the summer? I just finished Lilac Mohr’s delightful Math & Magic in Wonderland, and I loved it.
Highly recommended, for kids or adults!
About the Book
A Jubjub bird disguised as a lark,
Borogroves concealing a snark,
When you’re in Tulgey Wood, you must
Be careful whom it is you trust…
With the discovery of Mrs. Magpie’s Manual of Magic for Mathematical Minds, Lulu and Elizabeth embark on an exciting journey to a realm inspired by Lewis Carroll’s poetry. The twins must use ingenuity and sagacity to solve classic logic puzzles that promise to uncover the book’s secrets and earn them The Vorpal Blade. In this interactive novel, the reader is invited to play along with the two heroines on their grand mathematical adventure.
Do you have the smarts to help Lulu and Elizabeth outwit the frumious Bandersnatch?
It’s time to enter Wonderland and find out!
–from the back cover of Math & Magic in Wonderland by Lilac Mohr
What I Liked
Puns, poetry, and plenty of puzzles. Tangrams, tessellations, truth-tellers and liars. History tidbits and many classics of recreational mathematics.
The sisters Lulu and Elizabeth seem real — though perhaps more widely read than most of us. They are different from each other. They make mistakes and have disagreements. But they never deteriorate into the cliché of sibling rivalry that passes for characterization in too many children’s books.
In each chapter, the girls must solve a language, math, or logic puzzle to proceed along their journey. Then a “Play Along” section offers related puzzles for the reader to try.
No matter how challenging the topic, the book never talks down to the reader.
What I Didn’t Like
… Um … Honestly, I can’t think of anything.
Since it’s traditional to criticize the editing of self-published books, I will say this: There was at least one place where the wording seemed a bit awkward. I would have phrased the sentence differently. But don’t ask me to identify the page — I was too caught up in the story to bother jotting down such a quibble. And I tried flipping through the book as I wrote this post, but I can’t find it again.
Buy, or Don’t Buy?
Buy. Definitely buy.
Unless you hate logic puzzles and despise Lewis Carroll’s poetry.
But for everyone else, this book is truly a gem. If you like The Cat in Numberland or The Man Who Counted, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy Math & Magic in Wonderland.
Disclaimer: Like almost all book links on my blog, the links in this post take you to Amazon.com, where you can read descriptions and reviews. I make a few cent’s worth of affiliate commission if you make a purchase — but nowhere near enough to influence my opinion about the book.
And Now for the Giveaway
Lilac offered a paperback copy of Math & Magic in Wonderland for one lucky reader of Let’s Play Math blog.
The giveaway is done. Congratulations, Keshua!
But the comments section below remains open, and I’d still love to hear your answers:
Tell us about your favorite language, math, or logic puzzle book! Or share a book you’ve been wanting to read.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 