Buddy-Style Math: Doing Homework Without Tears

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

My daughter Kitten strongly dislikes math when forced to do it on her own, so I am trying to get back into the habit of doing “Buddy-Style Math” with her. We take turns working the problems in her workbook: mine, hers, mine, hers, and so on down the page. We work each problem out loud, explaining how we got the answer and checking each other as we go.

In a way, it is like Charlotte Mason-style narration applied to math, since my daughter has to process her thoughts in order to explain how she worked the problem, which fixes the math concepts more deeply in her mind.

Continue reading Buddy-Style Math: Doing Homework Without Tears

April Math Calendar

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

april-math-calendar

My homeschool co-op classes had a lot of fun creating this April calendar to hand out at our end-of-semester party on Friday. It’s not as easy to read as a traditional calendar — it is more like a puzzle. The expression in each square simplifies to that day’s date, so families can treat each day like a mini-review quiz: “Do you remember how to calculate this?”

Download your own copy:

If you’ve been wanting to start your own math club, you will find plenty of helpful ideas here:

Update

Check out my May Math Calendar post for more ideas about how to use these puzzles.

 
* * *

This blog is reader-supported.

If you’d like to help fund the blog on an on-going basis, then please join me on Patreon for mathy inspiration, tips, and an ever-growing archive of printable activities.

If you liked this post, and want to show your one-time appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal: paypal.me/DeniseGaskinsMath. If you go that route, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

“April Math Calendar” copyright © 2009 by Denise Gaskins.

How DO We Learn Math?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

cat-learns-through-osmosis

What makes it possible to learn advanced math fairly quickly is that the human brain is capable of learning to follow a given set of rules without understanding them, and apply them in an intelligent and useful fashion. Given sufficient practice, the brain eventually discovers (or creates) meaning in what began as a meaningless game.

— Keith Devlin
Should Children Learn Math by Starting with Counting?

It seems obvious that our children must have a wide range of experience with real world objects before counting, addition, or subtraction mean anything to them. But are other topics, such as calculus, better learned as abstract rules — as a game that we play with symbols? And what about the topics in the middle? For instance, how best can we break our algebra students of common errors such as distributing the square or canceling out addition terms?

To teach effectively, I need to understand how students learn. Do different approaches work best with different concepts? Or at different ages or stages of development? I can think of at least 3 ways that I have learned math — what about you? How do you and your children learn?

Continue reading How DO We Learn Math?

Math Game: Logarithm War

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Graph created at Draw Function Graphs.]

Kate at f(t) took my popular Math War game to a new level by making a set of Logarithm War cards. Cool! Download a deck for yourself:

Update

Logs and Trig War—Jim Pai extended Kate’s logarithm war to include trig functions. Double the cards, double the fun! Download from Jim’s blog: War: what is it good for?

Key Lime Pi

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

This may be my favoritest ever Pi Day T-shirt, designed by the admin over at 10-Minute Math. I admit it’s not very mathy, but I’ve always enjoyed word play, and I love key lime.

The design won a Reflection T-shirt Company contest and is now available to pre-order for only $8.99 (plus shipping). [Company seems to have gone out of business? Can’t find their website…]

Unfortunately, it won’t be available in time for this Friday’s class.

Math Teachers at Play #2

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Photo by Sister72.]

Welcome to the second Math Teachers At Play blog carnival! Some articles were submitted by their authors, other were drawn from the back-log in my blog reader, and I’ve spiced it all up with a few of my favorite quotations.

Let the mathematical fun begin…

Continue reading Math Teachers at Play #2