Have you and your children been struggling to learn the math facts? The game of Math Card War is worth more than a thousand math drill worksheets, letting you build your children’s calculating speed in a no-stress, no-test way.
Math concepts: greater-than/less-than, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, negative numbers, absolute value, and multi-step problem solving.
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For young children, mathematical concepts are part of life’s daily adventure. A toddler’s mind grapples with understanding the threeness of three blocks or three fingers or one raisin plus two more raisins make three.
Most children enter school with a natural feel for mathematical ideas. They can count out forks and knives for the table, matching sets of silverware with the resident set of people. They know how to split up the last bit of birthday cake and make sure they get their fair share, even if they have to cut halves or thirds. They enjoy drawing circles and triangles, and they delight in scooping up volumes in the sandbox or bathtub.
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The blackboard quotes for my math class have been a bit more philosophical the last few weeks:
A good problem should be more than a mere exercise; it should be challenging and not too easily solved by the student, and it should require some “dreaming” time.
—Howard Eves
An Introduction to the History of Mathematics
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As I get my notes together for today’s co-op classes, I’ll share a couple of blackboard quotes for your enjoyment:
Continue reading Math Quotes IV: Natural Numbers Are Better…
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I’ve been procrastinating my preparations for co-op classes this week, but I think I’m ready. I almost forgot the scissors, but now I have them in my bag, so we will be able to cut the “infinite pizza” pieces. And I have two fun quotes for the blackboard:
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I thought you might enjoy the quote I’m going to use on the blackboard in math class:
The clearer the teacher makes it, the worse it is for you. You must work things out for yourself and make the ideas your own.
—William F. Osgood, quoted in
Out of the Mouths of Mathematicians
by Rosemary Schmalz
Continue reading Math Quotes II: The Ultimate Goal of Mathematics
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My computer and I seem to have come to a temporary truce: I pretend I’m never going to shut it off again, and it pretends it’s always going to come back if I do have to reboot. (Nope, no new computer in the offing at this point. We’re just at a cease fire here, until the next big thunderstorm throws a power outage at us…) So I thought it was high time for me to get back into the habit of blog posting.
Continue reading I’m Ba-a-a-ack! (Math Quotes of the Week I)
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Well, my computer is still being rebellious, so I’m at dh’s office again to check e-mail while the kids are gone to karate. But I thought it was high time I got another entry up on the blog…
One of my favorite activities for Math Club is to have my students write their own story problems. Then we pass the problems around so everyone can try to solve them. With all the discussion of problem solving on the math forum lately, I thought it would be fun to extend the challenge to you all. Can you come up with a word problem for us to practice our problem-solving skills on?
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Eldest dd had her first calculus lesson last night: derivatives. The teacher found the speed of a car at a given point by using the distance function, calculating the average speed over shorter and shorter time intervals. Dd summarized the lesson for me:
“If you want to divide by zero, you have to sneak up on it from behind.”
Of course, she understands you can’t really divide by zero, but I thought her tongue-in-cheek comment was a pretty good description of the process of finding the limit as delta-t approached zero.
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I have been reading up on Charlotte Mason’s teaching style, and I plan to incorporate more copywork and dictation into our school program next year. Here are a few of my favorite funny quotes about math. (These would also make great blackboard quotes for a math classroom.)
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 