I have a new podcast interview, and I think you’ll enjoy it!
Check out Pam Barnhill’s 10 Minutes to a Better Homeschool on your favorite podcast app, or listen on the website:
Here’s a couple of excerpts…
Continue reading Podcast: How to Transform Math Lessons without Changing your Curriculum
Last week, I quoted Pam Harris calling out a foundational myth of math education, the idea that we need to teach kids the methods that work on even the most difficult math problems.
“We have a misconception in math education that we think we need to teach methods so that kids can answer the craziest kind of a particular problem.
“We would be far better served to teach kids to think about the most common kinds of questions WELL, and let technology handle the crankiest.”
—Pam Harris
Since many of us grew up in schools that taught these methods, they may feel like the only sensible approach to math. Without the standard procedures, how will our kids learn to do math?
If we don’t teach subtraction with borrowing/renaming, how can students figure out calculations like 431 − 86? If we don’t teach fraction rules, how will they handle problems like 1 1/2 ÷ 3/8?
Welcome to the 172nd edition of the Playful Math Blog Carnival, a buffet 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.
The carnival went on hiatus for a couple of months due to unexpected life issues facing our volunteer hosts. But we’re back now, and ready to celebrate!
By tradition, we start the carnival with a puzzle in honor of our 172nd edition. But if you’d rather jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here for the Table of Contents.
172 is a lazy caterer number: Imaging a caterer who brought a single large pie to serve the whole party. He needs to cut it into as many pieces as he can, using the fewest (straight) cuts he can get away with.
But for those of you who have followed the carnival for years, you may remember we played with the lazy caterer back in Playful Math 106. (That time, the caterer was serving pizza.) So here’s a bonus activity we’ve never done before…
The first several stages of a pattern are as follows:
This pattern sequence was named clock binary by its creator, noelements-setempty.
One of my favorite podcasts to listen to is Pam Harris’s Math Is Figure-Out-Able because she puts so many of my thoughts into words.
For example:
“We have a misconception in math education that we think we need to teach methods so that kids can answer the craziest kind of a particular problem.
“We would be far better served to teach kids to think about the most common kinds of questions WELL, and let the cranky ones go to ChatGPT. Because they’ll recognize the sense of the answer.
“Let technology handle the crankiest, and REASON about the rest of them.”
—Pam Harris,
the Math is Figure-out-able Fractions Challenge
Well, I do think she’s wrong about the AI chatbot, because ChatGPT comes up with the strangest bald-faced nonsense about math problems. Wolfram Alpha is a much more reliable resource.
But Harris’s main point stands. This misconception, this math-education myth, drives much of what happens in our classrooms and home schools today.
I’ve tried a few times over the years to express my philosophy of teaching math. Back when I first started doing workshops for homeschooling parents, I told them:
“Instead of drudgery, mathematics should be a game of discovery. It should give children the same ‘Eureka!’ thrill that sent Archimedes running through town in his birthday suit. I call this the ‘Aha!’ factor, the delight in solving a challenging puzzle.”
Years later, as the internet developed and much of life moved online, I started a blog about playing with math. And since all good blogs need an “About Me” page, I had another chance to sum up my thoughts:
“Math is like ice cream, with more flavors than you can imagine — and if all your children ever see is textbook math, that’s like feeding them broccoli-flavored ice cream.”
But over the years, some people got the impression that my goal was all about playing games. They asked, “How can we make math fun for our kids?” — as if gamification adds a candy coating to make the disgusting medicine more palatable.
And of course, I do write a lot of books about games. I think games serve much better than worksheets for practicing basic math skills.
Still, I wanted people to see that the ideas of math themselves are tasty tidbits worth playing with.
I’ve just launched the Denise Gaskins’ Playful Math Store!
The Grand Opening Sale runs through April 20 — add the discount code GRAND_20 at checkout to save 20% on your first order.
We have plenty of fun mathy goodness on hand, so I hope you’ll take some time to browse our collections. Don’t miss the math art collection, or the journaling resources, or my classic Math You Can Play series. And of course, there’s the merch.
Even better, we have both digital and print books, which is something my previous store couldn’t handle.
So many ways to celebrate the joy of mathematics.
May your family always enjoy the adventure of learning!
Did you know that, with our recent stretch goals, the Tabletop Math Games Kickstarter now features more than 90 amazing ways to play math with your kids?
And every pledge pushes us closer to the next new bonus, which means more new games and playful math goodies for every backer.
Don’t miss out on the excitement. Order your copy today:
Visit the Math Games Kickstarter ❱
I love how the challenge of a well-fought math game pushes players of all ages to think more creatively and build fluency.
So my Tabletop Math Games Collection is designed to make it easier than ever for busy families and over-stressed teachers to play with math.
All you need are common household supplies like cards, dice, and scratch paper. Children can open a Tabletop Math Games Collection book to any page and start playing right away, and the digital files make great classroom handouts or learning center games.
Continue reading Math Games Kickstarter: It Keeps Getting Better
There’s a new math journaling prompt this week.
Have your kids tried it yet?
This week’s prompt features one of my favorite quotations to get kids thinking (and writing) about the value of mistakes in learning. Or you might prefer last week’s prompt, featuring a classic math brainteaser and encouraging students to create their own related puzzles.
Or, if you’re reading this post later and missed those, there’s another great new prompt this week for you to explore.
Check it out:
To everyone who has supported my Tabletop Math Games Collection Kickstarter project: thank you ever so much! We’ve blown past our funding target and made it into Stretch Goal territory.
Now every pledge just makes the project better, earning new games and bonuses for every backer at the $5 level and above.
If you haven’t backed the project yet, check out what you’re missing:
Math games build mental flexibility and strategic reasoning in players of all ages. And even people who hated math in school can enjoy the friendly challenge of a game.
I love how the challenge of a well-fought math game pushes players of all ages to think more creatively and build fluency.
And so it begins: the Tabletop Math Games Collection is LIVE on Kickstarter!
To have a successful campaign, we need plenty of people to back the project early. The more supporters we get in these early days, the more likely the Kickstarter platform folks will help spread the news for us.
To give you a feel for the Tabletop Math Games Collection books, I’ve put together a free printable sampler file, with 4 ready-to-play card games you can enjoy today.
I think you’ll love it!
Continue reading Tabletop Math Games Kickstarter: Order Your Copy Today
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 