Check out my new printables for playing math with your kids:
The free 50-page PDF Hundred Charts Galore! file features 1–100 charts, 0–99 charts, bottom’s-up versions, multiple-chart pages, blank charts, game boards, and more. Everything you need to play the activities in my 70+ Things to Do with a Hundred Chart book (coming soon from Tabletop Academy Press).
If all goes well, the hundred chart book should be out (at least in ebook format) by the end of this month. While you’re waiting, you can try some of the activities in my all-time most popular blog post:
Want to help your kids learn math? Claim your free 24-page problem-solving booklet, and sign up to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
Math Concepts: number symbols, numerical order, thinking ahead. Players: two or more. Equipment: one math deck of playing cards (remove face cards and jokers), or a double deck for more than four players; additional cards to use as train cars.
Set-Up
Give each player four to six miscellaneous cards (such as the face cards and jokers you removed from the card deck) to serve as the cars of their number trains.
Lay these cards face down in a horizontal row, as shown. Shuffle the math card deck and spread it on the table as a fishing pond.
Line up the cars of your train.
How to Play
On your turn, draw one card and play it face up on one of your train cars. The numbers on your train must increase from left to right, but they do not need to be in consecutive order. If you do not have an appropriate blank place for your card, you have two choices:
• Mix the new card back into the fishing pond.
• Use the new number to replace one of your other cards, and then discard the old one.
The first player to complete a train of numbers that increases from left to right wins the game.
Two of the train cars have passengers. Which numbers could you put on the other cars?
Variations
House Rule: Decide how strict you will be about the “increases from left to right” rule and repeated numbers. Does “1, 3, 3, 7, 8” count as a valid number train? Or will the player have to keep trying for a card to replace one of the threes?
For older players: You can adapt Number Train to play with more advanced students:
This fall, my homeschool co-op math class will play with math journaling.
But my earlier dot-grid notebooks were designed for adults. Too thick, too many pages. And the half-cm dot grid made lines too narrow for young writers.
So I created a new series of paperback dot-grid journals for my elementary and middle school students.
I’m sure we’ll use several of these activities in my homeschool co-op math class this fall.
Noticing and Wondering
Learning math requires more than mastering number facts and memorizing rules. At its heart, math is a way of thinking.
So more than anything else, we need to teach our kids to think mathematically — to make sense of math problems and persevere in figuring them out.
Help your children learn to see with mathematical eyes, noticing and wondering about math problems.
Whenever your children need to learn a new idea in math, or whenever they get stuck on a tough homework problem, that’s a good time to step back and make sense of the math.
Kids can write their noticings and wonderings in the math journal. Or you can act as the scribe, writing down (without comment) everything child says.
For more tips on teaching students to brainstorm about math, check out these online resources from The Math Forum:
Problem-solving is a habit of mind that you and your children can learn and grow in. Help your kids practice slowing down and taking the time to fully understand a problem situation.
Puzzles Are Math Experiments
Almost anything your child notices or wonders can lead to a math experiment.
For example, one day my daughter played an online math game…
A math journal can be like a science lab book. Not the pre-digested, fill-in-the-blank lab books that some curricula provide. But the real lab books that scientists write to keep track of their data, and what they’ve tried so far, and what went wrong, and what finally worked.
Here are a few open-ended math experiments you might try:
Explore Shapes
Pick out a 3×3 set of dots. How many different shapes can you make by connecting those dots? Which shapes have symmetry? Which ones do you like the best?
What if you make shapes on isometric grid paper? How many different ways can you connect those dots?
Limit your investigation to a specific type of shape. How many different triangles can you make on a 3×3 set of dots? How many different quadrilaterals? What if you used a bigger set of dots?
Explore Angles
On your grid paper, let one dot “hold hands” with two others. How many different angles can you make? Can you figure out their degree without measuring?
Are there any angles you can’t make on your dot grid? If your paper extended forever, would there be any angles you couldn’t make?
Does it make a difference whether you try the angle experiments on square or isometric grid paper?
Explore Squares
How many different squares can you draw on your grid paper? (Don’t forget the squares that sit on a slant!) How can you be sure that they are perfectly square?
Number the rows and columns of dots. Can you find a pattern in the corner positions for your squares? If someone drew a secret square, what’s the minimum information you would need to duplicate it?
Does it make a difference whether you try the square experiments on square or isometric grid paper?
I’d love to hear your favorite math explorations or journaling tips!
Please share in the comments section below.
P.S.: Do you have a blog? If you’d like to feature a math journal review and giveaway, I’ll provide the prize. Send a message through my contact form or leave a comment below, and we’ll work out the details.
Want to help your kids learn math? Claim your free 24-page problem-solving booklet, and sign up to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
Want to help your kids learn math? Claim your free 24-page problem-solving booklet, and sign up to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
Welcome to the 115th edition of the Playful Math Education Blog Carnival — a smorgasbord of links to bloggers all around the internet who have great ideas for learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to pre-college.
In honor of Women’s History Month, this carnival features quotes from fifteen women mathematicians.
They came from many countries and followed a variety of interests.
They conquered new topics in mathematics and expanded the world’s understanding of old ones.
They wrestled with theorems, raised children, published articles, won awards, faced discrimination, led professional organizations, and kept going through both success and failure.
Some gained international renown, but most enjoyed quiet lives.
They studied, learned, and lived (and some still live) as most of us do — loving their families and friends, joking with colleagues, hoping to influence students.
I think you’ll find their words inspiring.
“What I really am is a mathematician. Rather than being remembered as the first woman this or that, I would prefer to be remembered, as a mathematician should, simply for the theorems I have proved and the problems I have solved.”
—Julia Robinson (1919–1985)
“All in all, I have found great delight and pleasure in the pursuit of mathematics. Along the way I have made great friends and worked with a number of creative and interesting people. I have been saved from boredom, dourness, and self-absorption. One cannot ask for more.”
—Karen Uhlenbeck (b. 1942)
But 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!
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. This year may prove to be a challenge.
Use the digits in the year 2018 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 2-0-1-8 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 use a double factorial, n!! = the product of all integers from 1 to n that have the same parity (odd or even) as n. I’m including these because Math Forum allows them, but I personally try to avoid the beasts. I feel much more creative when I can wrangle a solution without invoking them.
Want to help your kids learn math? Claim your free 24-page problem-solving booklet, and sign up to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
I’d love to hear your favorite math explorations or journaling tips! 
Welcome to the 115th edition of the Playful Math Education Blog Carnival — a smorgasbord of links to bloggers all around the internet who have great ideas for learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to pre-college. 
