Moebius Noodles: New Must-Read Math Book

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

MoebiusNoodles2DCover

Homeschoolers, after-schoolers, unschoolers, or anyone else: if you’re a parent with kids at home, you need this book. If you work with children in any way (grandparent, aunt/uncle, teacher, child care, baby sitter, etc.) you need this book. Or if you hated math in school and never understood how anyone could enjoy it, you need this book!

Moebius Noodles is a travel guide to the Math Universe for adventurous families (and it has lots of beautiful pictures, too!) featuring games and activities that draw out the rich, mathematical properties of everyday objects in ways accessible to parents and children:

  • A snowflake is an example of a fractal and an invitation to explore symmetry.
  • Cookies offer combinatorics and calculus games.
  • Paint chips come in beautiful gradients, and floor tiles form tessellations.

Continue reading Moebius Noodles: New Must-Read Math Book

How to Recognize a Successful Homeschool Math Program

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
photo by danielrmccarthy
photo by Dan McCarthy (cc-by)

After teaching co-op math classes for several years, I’ve become known as the local math maven. Upon meeting one of my children, fellow homeschoolers often say, “Oh, you’re Denise’s son/daughter? You must be really good at math.”

The kids do their best to smile politely — and not to roll their eyes until the other person has turned away.

I hear similar comments after teaching a math workshop: “Wow, your kids must love math!” But my children are individuals, each with his or her own interests. A couple of them enjoy an occasional geometry or logic puzzle, but they never voluntarily sit down to slog through a math workbook page.

In fact, one daughter expressed the depth of her youthful perfectionist angst by scribbling all over the cover of her Miquon math workbook:

  • “I hate math! Hate, hate, hate-hate-HATE MATH!!!”

Translation: “If I can’t do it flawlessly the first time, then I don’t want to do it at all.”

photo by Jason Bolonski (cc-by)
photo by Jason Bolonski (cc-by)

Continue reading How to Recognize a Successful Homeschool Math Program

Hundred Chart Idea #28: Hang It on the Wall

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Math is beautiful when it communicates an abstract idea clearly and provides new insight. Yelena’s hundred chart poster does just that:

[From the Moebius Noodles blog]

Check out my newest home decor item, a hundred chart. The amount of work I put into it, I consider getting it framed to be proudly displayed in the living room. The thing is monumental in several ways:

1. It is monumentally different from my usual approach to choosing math aids. My rule is if it takes me more than 5 minutes to prepare a math manipulative, I skip it and find another way.

2. It is monumentally time-consuming to create from scratch all by yourself.

3. It is monumentally fun to show to a child.

— Yelena McManaman
Moebius Noodles

Now she’s provided a fantastic set of free hundred chart printables:

Thanks, Yelena!

Share Your Ideas

It began with a humble list of seven things in the first (now out of print) edition of my book about teaching home school math. Over the years I added new ideas, and online friends contributed, too, so the list grew to become one of the most popular posts on my blog:

Can you think of anything else we might do with a hundred chart? Add your ideas in the Comments section below, and I’ll add the best ones to our master list.

Let’s Play Math Book Update

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

I love math, but had forgotten why I developed a love for math in the first place. This book made me realize how experiences in my childhood lit a spark in me … Denise Gaskins shows us how we can ignite this fire in our own children.

I believe her suggestions are invaluable for homeschoolers, but essential for the many parents whose children are learning to dislike math in school.

— Carrie
Review at Amazon.com, December 1, 2012

If you’ve wavered on whether to pick up my math book, be warned: This is the last month for the introductory sale price. In January, the ebook price will go up to $5.99.

Continue reading Let’s Play Math Book Update

Would Your Student Like to Start a Blog?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

“Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own.”

— William Zinsser
Writing to Learn

Since the last recession, our homeschool co-op has been too small to support a blogging class, and I have seriously neglected my Blogging 2 Learn blog. So last week, I decided to refresh everything by starting up a new Blogging 101 Series. If your student has been longing to start a blog, you may want to check it out.

Introducing the “Let’s Play Math!” Book, Beta Version

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

This blog originally grew out of my Homeschool Math Manuals series published in the 1990s, and when I typed a post, I often added new tips, activities, or examples. Now the stories are coming full circle: I’ve entered the enriched blog-post versions back into the book manuscript, fixed all the typos I could find, deleted obsolete references, and added a list of my favorite “living” math books and internet links.

But no writer can accurately judge her own work. A professional editor is helpful, but he or she can’t see the book with a real homeschooler’s eye. Most writers look for beta-readers among their friends or acquaintances. As we live in a rural area, my supply of potential victims helpers is limited. So I decided to try an ebook experiment: Use Amazon.com to find readers willing to pay the price of a Caramel Macchiato for a pre-publication beta version of my book.

All of the books in the Math Ebooks Beta Series are designed to supplement your current math program — to help you teach math with ANY curriculum. If you would like to help me improve the books, please grab a notepad and jot down your thoughts as you read:

  • Let’s Play Math:
    How Homeschooling Families Can Learn Math Together, and Enjoy It!
    Discover new ways to explore math as a family adventure, playing with ideas. True mathematical thinking involves the same creative reasoning that children use to solve puzzles. Introduce your children to the “Aha!” factor, the thrill of solving a challenging puzzle, and build thinking skills with toys, games, and library books. Find out how to choose math manipulatives, or make your own, and learn how to tackle story problems with confidence. Let’s Play Math will give you a wealth of motivating, hands-on ideas for teaching home school math.

Edited to Add a Clarification

If you are interested in my book but don’t have time to take notes and send me comments, that’s OK. Feel free to take advantage of the beta price anyway — there’s absolutely no obligation.

I hope you and your children enjoy the adventure of learning math together!

Mathematicians Love to Play

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Mathematicians love to play with ideas. They experiment with puzzles. They tinker with the connections between shapes and numbers, patterns and logic, growth and change. To a mathematician, the fun of the game is in experimenting, in trying new things and discovering what will happen. Many modern strategy games were invented primarily for the fun puzzle of analyzing who would win.

Continue reading Mathematicians Love to Play

Mathematicians Ask Questions

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Wise mathematicians are never satisfied with merely finding the answer to a problem. If they decide to put effort into solving a math puzzle, then they are determined to milk every drop of knowledge they can get from that problem. When mathematicians find an answer, they always go back and think about the problem again.

  • Is there another way to look at it?
  • Can we make our solution simpler or more elegant?
  • Does this problem relate to any other mathematical idea?
  • Can we expand our solution and find a general principle?

Continue reading Mathematicians Ask Questions

How Can I Teach Math If I Don’t Understand It?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Our childhood struggles with schoolwork gave most of us a warped view of mathematics. We learned to manipulate numbers and symbols according to what seemed like arbitrary rules. We may have understood a bit here and a bit there, but we never saw how the framework fit together. We stumbled from one class to the next, packing more and more information into our strained memory, until the whole structure threatened to collapse. Finally we crashed in a blaze of confusion, some of us in high school algebra, others in college calculus.

Continue reading How Can I Teach Math If I Don’t Understand It?