Board games are a celebration of problem solving, and problem solving is at the heart of a quality mathematics education… The mathematics might be hidden, but I guarantee you that it will be there.
— Gordon Hamilton, MathPickle.com
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These advent calendars feature a new math puzzle or game for each day of December until Christmas. Many of the activities are designed to be done in a group, but they work fine for home school families who play with math together. Enjoy!
Bogusia Gierus, host of this month’s Math Teachers at Play blog carnival, is offering to give away her First Book of Hexa-Trex Puzzles for just the cost of shipping. How generous!
My math club had fun with several of these puzzles a few years ago, and the “Easy” ones (like the sample shown here) were just right for my 4th-5th grade students. One girl enjoyed them enough that she took home extra copies to share with her father.
It’s a thin book, just the right size for a stocking-stuffer. To see the full range of difficulty levels, look over the puzzles on Bogusia’s Daily Hexa-Trex page. To get your own copy of the book, read the giveaway instructions on Bogusia’s blog.
Object of the Puzzle
The object of the puzzle is to find the equation pathway that leads through ALL the tiles.
Forming Equations
- Two or three (or four or five etc.) digit numbers are made up of the individual tiles in the particular order as the equation is read. For example 5 x 5 = 2 5 is correct, but read backwards 5 2 = 5 x 5 is incorrect.
- The equation must be continuous (no jumping over tiles or empty spaces).
- Each tile can be used ONLY ONCE.
- Order of operations is followed. Multiplication and division comes before addition and subtraction.
- The tile “-” can be used as both a subtraction operation or a negative sign in front of a digit, making it a negative number.
[Photo by geishaboy500.]
It began with a humble list of 7 things to do with a hundred chart in one of my out-of-print books about teaching home school math. Over the years I added a few new ideas, and online friends contributed still more, so the list grew to its current length of 26. Recently, thanks to several fans at pinterest, it has become the most popular post on my blog:
Now I am working several hours a day revising my old math books, in preparation for publishing new, much-expanded editions. And as I typed in all the new things to do with a hundred chart, I thought of one more to add to the list:
(27) How many numbers are there from 11 to 25? Are you sure? What does it mean to count from one number to another? When you count, do you include the first number, or the last one, or both, or neither? Talk about inclusive and exclusive counting, and then make up counting puzzles for each other.
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.
An Apollonian pumpkin patch and Sierpinski candy corn:
Great ideas for mathy porch decorations:
My favorite blood-thirsty online game from Murderous Maths:
And here’s some less-violent holiday math for the younger set:
Do you know of more mathy fall fun? Share your links in the comments section!
This is wonderful! I am definitely not a crafts-person, but I can’t wait to make some of these. If I can just find my daughter’s pony beads….
From Cindy at love2learn2day, who got the idea from a math conference workshop by Kim Sutton.
Krista at the LivingMathForum wrote, “We’ve used these for several years. My son even made a bunch of them a few years ago and sold them at a homeschool resource fair. We always have one in most of our board games to help younger children add up their die rolls. I find them relaxing for some reason, just moving the beads along the cord, and my son will sometimes sit and listen to me reading, etc., and just manipulate the beads.”
You can use these math activities to play with your counting rope:
We continue with our counting lessons — and once again, Kitten proves that she doesn’t think the same way I do. In fact, her solution is so elegant that I think she could have a future as a mathematician. After all, every aspiring novelist needs a day job, right?
If only I could get her to give up the idea that she hates math…
How many of the possible distinct arrangements of 1-6 have 1 to the left of 2?
Hooray! Moebius Noodles tipped the bucket. Thank you to everyone who chipped in!
The first Moebius Noodles game is a celebration of the Möbius strip. To play:
And for dinner tonight, try Möbius Marinara!
The MathCounts Club Program provides enrichment activities and puzzles for 6th-8th grade math clubs within schools — and homeschool groups may join, too! Participants receive a free Club in a Box Resource Kit, which includes the Club Resource Guide, two game boards to accompany one of the meeting plans, 12 MathCounts pencils, and a MathCounts tote bag for the coach. (Apparently they had good intentions, but they didn’t follow through. My box had no tote.)
A school (or homeschool group) may choose to participate in the Club Program, the competition or both programs. Since these programs can complement each other, any school that registers for the MathCounts competition automatically gets the Club in a Box Resource Kit, too.
For more information, check out these links:
Photo by Eirik Newth via flickr.
In a lazy, I-don’t-want-to-do-school mood, Princess Kitten was ready to stop after three math problems. We had gotten two of them correct, but the last one was counting the ways to paint a cube in black and white, and we forgot to count the solid-color options.
For my perfectionist daughter, one mistake was excuse enough to quit. She leaned her head against me as we sat together on the couch and said, “We’re done. Done, done, done.” If she could, she would have started purring — one of the most manipulative noises known to humankind. I’m a soft touch. Who can work on math when there’s a kitten to cuddle?
Still, I managed to squeeze in one more puzzle. I picked up my whiteboard marker and started writing:
DONE
DOEN
DNOE
DENO
DNEO
ONED
ODNE
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 