Feature video by Stuart Jeckel via youtube.
DO Try This at Home
And ask questions!
- What do you notice?
- What do you wonder?
- Will the pattern continue?
- How can we know for sure?
Every Day Is Math Day
Happy 11/12/13, otherwise known as “tenty-one, tenty-two, tenty-three.”
Do your young children have trouble counting in the teens? Try making up Funny Numbers to help them! It’s a great habit to develop, because Funny Numbers will come in handy as mental math tools throughout their school math career.
If you’d like to make your own Happy Math Day post, check out the instructions here: Every Day Is Mathematics Day. And please share a link in the comments section below — I’d love to see what math holiday you invent!
Update: The numbers 11, 12, and 13 form an arithmetic progression. If that sounds too scary for your kids, check out Patrick’s bedtime math discussion Making Progress, Arithmetically.
Algebra for (Almost) Any Age
Fawn Nguyen’s Visual Patterns website just keeps getting better and better. Check it out:
In addition to the 115 puzzle patterns (as of this writing), the site features a Gallery page of patterns submitted by students. And under the “Teachers” tab, Fawn shares a form to guide students in thinking their way through to the algebraic formula for a pattern.
How can you use these patterns to develop algebraic thinking with younger students? Mike Lawler and sons demonstrate Pattern #1 in the YouTube video below.
Things To Do with a Hundred Chart #30
Here’s one more entry for my 20+ Things to Do with a Hundred Chart post, thanks to David Radcliffe in the comments on Monday’s post:
(30) Can you mark ten squares Sudoku-style, so that no two squares share the same row or column? Add up the numbers to get your score. Then try to find a different set of ten Sudoku-style squares. What do you notice? What do you wonder?
[Suggested by David Radcliffe.]
Share Your Ideas
Can you think of anything else we might do with a hundred chart? Add your ideas in the Comments section below, and I’ll add the best ones to our master list.
Things To Do with a Hundred Chart #29
Here’s a new entry for my 20+ Things to Do with a Hundred Chart post:
(29) Blank 100 Grid Number Investigations: Challenge your students to deduce the secret behind each pattern of shaded squares. Then have them make up pattern puzzles of their own.
[Created by Stuart Kay. Free registration required to download pdf printable.]
Share Your Ideas
Can you think of anything else we might do with a hundred chart? Add your ideas in the Comments section below, and I’ll add the best ones to our master list.
Maze Game: Land or Water?
This was a fun activity from Moebius Noodles for our PK-1st grade Homeschool Math in the Park group. The children take turns making a maze and setting a dinosaur inside. Then the other dinosaurs (parents or siblings) try to guess whether their friend is on the land or in the water.
Player #1
(1) First, draw a big circle on the white board. This is your lake.
(2) With a finger or a bit of cloth, erase a small section of the circle to create the opening for your maze.
(3) Starting at one edge of the opening, draw a random squiggle inside the circle. Make your squiggle end at the other edge of the opening.
(4) Set your dinosaur anywhere inside the maze.
Player #2
(1) Now it’s your turn to guess. Is the dinosaur standing on the land? Is it swimming in the water?
(2) How will you figure out if you guessed right?
(3) Check by jumping across the lines of the maze. Each jump takes you across a boundary: Splash! (Into the water.) Thump! (Back on the land.) Splash! Thump! … Until you reach the dinosaur inside.
(4) Or go to the maze entrance and walk your dinosaur along the path. Can you find your way?
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“Maze Game: Land or Water?” copyright © 2013 by Denise Gaskins. All photos copyright © Denise Gaskins.
Happy Math Storytelling Day
Feature photo (above) by L. Marie. Math comic by davidd. Both via flickr (CC BY 2.0).
Hooray for September 25th — it’s Math Storytelling Day!
Celebrate Math Storytelling Day by making up and sharing math stories. Everyone loves a story, so this is a great way to motivate your children to play around with math. What might a math story involve? Patterns, logic, history, puzzles, relationships, fictional characters, … and yes, even numbers.
For inspiration, visit:
- The original Math Storytelling Day post
- Math Storytelling Day at Math Mama Writes
- Stories about The Idea of Counting at Cut the Knot
- Maria’s story about Apple Math Snacks
Have you and your children created any math stories? We’d love to hear! Please share your links in the comments section below.
Puzzle: Algebra on Rectangles
Gordon Hamilton of Math Pickle recently posted these videos on how to make algebra 1 puzzles on rectangles. As I was watching, Kitten came in and looked over my shoulder. She said, “Those look like fun!”
They look like fun to me, too, and I bet your beginning algebra students will enjoy them:
- Single Variable Algebra on Rectangles
- History and Algebra Puzzles (part 2)
- Squaring.net collection of rectangles tiled with squares, sorted by size ratio
Summer Problem Solving for the Young, the Very Young, and the Young at Heart
Here is yet another wonderful summer math opportunity for homeschoolers or anyone who works with kids: a free, 3-week mini-course on math problem solving for all ages.
The course is being organized by Dr. James Tanton, Dr. Maria Droujkova, and Yelena McManaman. The course participants include families, math clubs, playgroups, and other small circles casually exploring adventurous mathematics with kids of any age.
Would you like to join us? Check out the mpsMOOC13 home page for instructions. The deadline for joining is July 7 July 3.
And then the real fun begins!
Continue reading Summer Problem Solving for the Young, the Very Young, and the Young at Heart
What Do You Notice? What Do You Wonder?
If you want your children to understand and enjoy math, you need to let them play around with beautiful things and encourage them to ask questions.
Here is a simple yet beautiful thing I stumbled across online today, which your children may enjoy:
It reminds me of string art designs, but the app makes it easy to vary the pattern and see what happens.
- What do your students notice about the patterns?
- What questions can they ask?
I liked the way the app uses “minutes” as the unit that describes the star you want the program to draw. That makes it easier (for me, at least) to notice and understand the patterns, since minutes are a more familiar and intuitive unit than degrees, let alone radians.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 