For details on using a Minimalist Math Curriculum, see my earlier post How To Make Time for Exploration.
If you’re teaching or homeschooling students in 6th grade, here’s the new minimalist curriculum link:
As I mentioned in my earlier post, a minimalist curriculum can be a great way to free up time for playing math games and exploring enrichment activities (like these).
Perhaps the most common objection I hear to using math games and enrichment activities is, “I don’t have the time. I can’t even get through our regular math book!”
Well, here’s one possible solution: Use a “Minimalist Math” outline to guide your instruction, turning your regular textbook into a backup resource, teaching only the topics your children don’t already know, leaving more time free for exploration and playful discovery.
Michelle at ResearchParent.com condensed the elementary math curriculum down to 360 problems per year, just 10 per week.
Take just a few puzzles each day, and talk math with your kids:
Use colorful markers on a whiteboard for low-stress exploration. If your children can solve a problem and explain their reasoning, you don’t need to study that topic. When they get stuck, follow the Notice-Wonder-Create method described in this blog post series.
If you’re both stymied, that’s when you pull out your regular textbook (or look the topic up online).
Of course, children still need plenty of practice to master the math facts and solidify their knowledge.
Since you’re not spending as much time on lessons and homework, you can plan on playing lots of math games. Games are a fun, low-stress way to firm up math skills.
Check out My Best (Free) Math Games for All Ages, and follow the Math Game Monday posts on my blog.
To enrich your child’s mind with the great ideas of mathematics and whet their appetite for learning, nothing beats a “living” math book.
A living book is one that brings our minds into direct contact with the great ideas of life.
Check out my Math with Living Books lists to get started, and ask your librarian for more suggestions.
Michelle’s Minimalist Math Curriculum goes through 6th grade (so far). But you could use the Corbettmaths 5-a-Day problems in the same way for older students.
And for enrichment activities to fill up your free math time, I can’t think of a better resource for all ages than the NrichMaths website.
“When I first started homeschooling, math became the most overwhelming, unpleasant part of our day. As someone who loves math, I didn’t want to continue on a path that was leading to such bad attitudes.
“My Minimalist Math Curriculum covers the same breadth of topics as a traditional curriculum without all the repetition. You are welcome to use what I created in whatever way serves your family.”
— Michelle, Research Parent
Mathematics Activities for Kids
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“How To Make Time for Exploration” copyright © 2022 by Denise Gaskins. Image at the top of the post copyright © Aron Visuals, Andrew Ebrahim, and Melissa Askew via Unsplash.com.
Welcome to the 154th edition of the Playful Math Education Blog Carnival — a smorgasbord of delectable tidbits of mathy fun. It’s like a free online magazine devoted to learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to high school.
Bookmark this post, so you can take your time browsing.
There’s so much playful math to enjoy!
By tradition, we start the carnival with a puzzle/activity in honor of our 154th edition. But if you’d rather jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here to see the Table of Contents.
Since 154 is a nonagonal number, I think you might enjoy visiting some of my old “Adventures of Alexandria Jones” posts about figurate numbers:
And then try this math journaling prompt: Build or draw your own nonagonal numbers — numbers built from 9-sided polygons.
How many nonagonal numbers can you find? What do you notice? Does it make you wonder?
In previous posts, I encouraged parents, homeschoolers, and teachers to explore the world of math and introduced one of my favorite learning tools, the math journal. Then I shared several of my favorite types of journaling prompts to get your kids started writing about math.
Math journal prompts offer a wide range of options for students to explore. Most of the prompts do not have a “right” or “wrong” answer. Our goal is to root around in some small corner of the world of math, to lift a stone and peek underneath it, just to see what we can find.
The idea that being good at math means finding the right answers is a huge myth. Of course, many problems in math do have a single right answer. But even for those problems, the answer is not the real math of the problem.
Math is all about thinking.
It’s like taking a road trip. You may have a destination, but there are many paths you could take to get there. Different students may take different paths — they may think about the problem in different ways.
It’s this reasoning that is the real math, and the right answer is just a side effect of reasoning well.
Continue reading How To Respond to Your Child’s Math Writing
In previous posts, I encouraged parents, homeschoolers, and teachers to explore the world of math and introduced one of my favorite learning tools, the math journal.
But you may be wondering, what can my students do with their journal? How do I find good math prompts?
Here are five different ways your children can explore math through writing, classified by the type of reasoning involved.
Ask your children to play a number or strategy game and then write about it.
Game prompts break through the idea that math is dull and boring. They help students develop a positive attitude toward math while practicing their number skills or strategic thinking.
Continue reading 5 Ways To Enrich Your Student’s Experience of Math
In my previous post, I encouraged parents, homeschoolers, and teachers to think of math as a nature walk through an infinite world of wonder.
A math journal is a record of your child’s journey through this world of mathematics.
In a math journal, children explore their own concepts about numbers, shapes, and patterns through drawing or writing in response to a question. Journaling teaches them to see with mathematical eyes — not just to remember what we adults tell them, but to create their own math.
Journaling brings math back into the liberal arts. It makes abstract ideas accessible and stretches children’s understanding, building math fluency and creating a solid foundation for future learning.
Are you a parent, homeschooler, or teacher? Do your children struggle to learn math? Are you worried about them falling behind?
So many parents (and teachers, too!) feel like they are “not a math person,” yet they know how important math is for their children to learn. How can we teach something we don’t really understand ourselves?
Others feel comfortable with math themselves — and may even love it — yet still struggle to pass on their knowledge to their kids. How can we share the joy we see in numbers, shapes, and patterns with youngsters who think they hate math?
Continue reading The Creative Way To Help Your Kids Learn Math
Welcome to the 150th edition of the Playful Math Education Blog Carnival — a smorgasbord of delectable tidbits of mathy fun. It’s like a free online magazine devoted to learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to high school.
Bookmark this post, so you can take your time browsing.
There’s so much playful math to enjoy!
We didn’t have a volunteer host for October, so I’m squeezing this in between extended-family situations that require my time. If you’d like to help keep the Playful Math Carnival alive, we desperately need hosts for 2022!
By tradition, we start the carnival with a puzzle/activity in honor of our 150th edition. This puzzle comes from the archives of Iva Sallay’s delightful Find the Factors blog.
Copy the puzzle diagrams below. Write numbers in the boxes to make true statements going uphill, and use the same numbers to make true statements going downhill:
Six has two factor pairs. One of those factor pairs adds up to 5, and the other one subtracts to 5. Can you place those factors in the proper boxes to complete the first puzzle?
150 has six factor pairs. One of those factor pairs adds up to 25, and another one subtracts to 25. If you can identify those factor pairs, then you can complete the second puzzle!
How are the two puzzles related?
Iva also posts one of my favorite multiplication puzzles, her scrambled times tables. Check out puzzle #150 in this post (it’s Level 3, or medium difficulty) and then browser her site for plenty more.
I love listening to podcasts during my morning walk with the dogs. One of my favorites over the past year has been Pam Harris and Kim Montague’s Math is Figure-Out-Able podcast.
Figure-out-able. What a great word!
Figure-out-able sums up what I mean when I tell parents that math is “applied common sense.” Kids can use the things they know to figure out things they don’t yet know.
And figuring things out like that is fun, like a mental game where we play with the ideas of numbers, shapes, and patterns.
Usually, the podcast targets teachers, and the hosts try to show how they can help students learn to mathematize — to think mathematically. Over the past few weeks, however, Pam and Kim have been talking directly to parents about how to help their children learn math.
Welcome to the 147th edition of the Playful Math Education Blog Carnival — a smorgasbord of delectable tidbits of mathy fun. It’s like a free online magazine devoted to learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to high school.
Bookmark this post, so you can take your time browsing. There’s so much playful math to enjoy!
By tradition, we start the carnival with a puzzle in honor of our 147th edition. But if you’d rather jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here to see the Table of Contents.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 