[Photo by theogeo.]
Christmas afternoon is a slow time at our house. How shall we while away the hours until the turkey is done? With math, of course!
Check out this puzzle from Blinkdagger.
MathCounts — Ready or Not, Here It Comes
[Feature photo above “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch” from CheezBurger.com.]
Okay, kids, I know you’re on break, but Mr. Grinch would tell you that’s no excuse to laze around playing games and eating cookies. There is only a month until our school MathCounts competition, which doesn’t give you much time to prepare. I’ve collected several resources to build up your mental muscle-power before the test…
Contig Game: Master Your Math Facts
[Photo by Photo Mojo via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).]
Yahtzee and other board games provide a modicum of math fact practice. But for intensive, thought-provoking math drill, I can’t think of any game that would beat Contig.
Math concepts: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, order of operations, mental math
Number of players: 2 – 4
Equipment: Contig game board, three 6-sided dice, pencil and scratch paper for keeping score, and bingo chips or wide-tip markers to mark game squares
Set Up
Place the game board and dice between players, and give each player a marker or pile of chips. (Markers do not need to be different colors.) Write the players’ names at the top of the scratch paper to make a score sheet.
More Free Math Resources
[Photo by One Laptop Per Child.]
Once again, I am adding to my Free (Mostly) Math Resources page. Here are a handful of helpful websites for teaching math…
Visual Puzzle: What Is This?
[Photo by fdecomite.]
I stumbled across this cool project during a Creative Commons search at Flickr. Can you guess what it is?
Math Club: Counting 101
[Fature photo above by ThunderChild tm.]
The last couple of weeks, in Math Club, we’ve been learning to count. My new set of MathCounts students have never heard of combinatorics, so we started at the very beginning:
- Counting and Probability I by Keone Hon
- Counting and Probability by Jason Batterson
Writing to Learn Math II
[Photo by Andy Hay.]
In addition to all the funny Google searches, I get plenty of normal inquiries about math topics. People come here looking for help with fractions, word problems, and math club activities — no surprise, those — but I would never have predicted the popularity of the search topic “writing in math class.”
Last year, I compiled a variety of math journal resources, but I’ve found many more since then, especially for older (high school and college) students. So if you’re looking for new ways to get your math students writing…
30+ Things to Do with a Hundred Chart
[Photo by geishaboy500 via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).]
Are you looking for creative ways to help your children study math? Even without a workbook or teacher’s manual, your kids can learn a lot about numbers. Just spend an afternoon playing around with a hundred chart (also called a hundred board or hundred grid).
My free 50-page PDF Hundred Charts Galore! printables 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 below and those in my new 70+ Things to Do with a Hundred Chart book.
Download Free “Hundred Charts Galore!” Printables
Shop for “70+ Things To Do with a Hundred Chart” Book
And now, let’s play…
Online Game: Math Caching
In the treasure-hunting game of Geocaching (pronounced “geo-cashing”), players use GPS systems to locate boxes hidden at different geographical locations across the country.
Now, the creative people at Mathbits.com have come up with an online treasure-hunting activity for junior high and high school students, called MathCaching. Students solve mathematical problems to find hidden “boxes” on the Internet. Each box reveals clues to the location of the next one.
The MathCaching game covers pre-algebra through trigonometry topics, with calculus levels under development. For more information, visit the MathCaching site, or read the post on my Frugal Homeschooling blog.
The Olympics: Math Puzzles and a Game
[Photo by striatic.]
Maybe it’s because school is out for the summer, but there don’t seem to be all that many Olympics-related math resources on the Web. I did find one cool game, however, and a nice stack of word problems. I hope you enjoy them!
Update: Be sure to see my blog post Olympic Logic for more links and puzzles!
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 