My New Blog: Frugal Homeschooling

Posted on by Denise Gaskins


Photo by ninjapoodles.

As if I didn’t have enough things to do, I have started a new blog: Frugal Homeschooling, [It’s still there, but no new posts since Sept. 2008. I was stretched too thin, trying to do two blogs.] inspired by the popularity of my math resource page. For months, I have been wanting to write a similar page about homeschooling, but it always seemed like too big a chore even to get started.

On the new blog, however, I can enter links one post at a time — check out the latest Frugal posts in the sidebar widget, just under my Popular Posts list. Bit by bit, I hope it will grow into a helpful resource list for homeschoolers.

Continue reading My New Blog: Frugal Homeschooling

The Function Machine Game

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Math concepts: odd numbers, even numbers, greater-than/less-than, rounding off, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, negative numbers, prime numbers, square numbers, problem solving, mental math
Number of players: two or more
Equipment: pencil (or pen) and paper for every player

Continue reading The Function Machine Game

Welcome to Blogland, Niner!

Posted on by Denise Gaskins


Photo by Niner.

The daughter who supplies my header photos has started a blog to show off her pictures:

Niner’s SnapFair
[It’s pronounced “NEE-ner.”]

Update: She no longer posts to that blog, but has been writing and posting photos, recipes, and craft projects to her new blog — College & The Years After.

Her photography skills continue to improve, and her sense of humor comes through in the stories that accompany each photo. I’m sure she’d love to have you stop by and visit!

Continue reading Welcome to Blogland, Niner!

How to Teach Math to a Struggling Student

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

photo by MC Quinn via flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Paraphrased from a homeschool math discussion forum:

“Help! My daughter struggles with arithmetic. I guess she is like me: just not a math person. She is an outstanding reader. When we do word problems, she usually has no trouble. She’s a whiz at strategy games and beats her dad at chess every time. But numbers — yikes! When we play Yahtzee, she gets lost trying to add up her score. The simple basics of adding and subtracting confuse her.

“Since I find math difficult myself, it’s hard for me to know what she needs. What’s missing to make it click for her? She used to think math was fun and tested well above grade level, but I listened to some well-meaning advice and totally changed the way we were schooling. I switched from using workbooks and games to using Saxon math, and she got extremely frustrated. Now she hates math.”

Continue reading How to Teach Math to a Struggling Student

Free Shakespeare for Fun and Copywork

Posted on by Denise Gaskins


Photo by Arbron.

This week only, [When I checked the link in April 2011, this was still free!] CurrClick (which carries the Math Mammoth workbook series) is offering Quotations from Shakespeare’s Plays as a free download. This ebook offers copywork tips from Charlotte Mason and about 30 pages of passages from Macbeth, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, etc.

And if you are planning a study of the Bard, you won’t want to miss the following always-free Internet resources.

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Quotes XXI: How Is Logic Like Whiskey?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins


Photo by Brian – Progressive Spin.

Logic is the science of making valid deductions and proofs — and it is also a fruitful topic for blackboard quotes. Here are a few of my favorites:

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

— G. K. Chesterton
The Man Who Was Orthodox

Continue reading Quotes XXI: How Is Logic Like Whiskey?

Checking for Old, Rusty Links

Posted on by Denise Gaskins


Photo by Clearly Ambiguous.

If you blog about MathCounts, beware that they recently overhauled their website — which made almost everyone’s links to them obsolete. I ran a routine check for dead links and found quite a few on my blog. I hope that I’ve caught most of them, but if you stumble across one of those nasty “Page not found” messages when you click a link on my blog, I hope you will report it in the comments section.

Continue reading Checking for Old, Rusty Links

Game: Avoid Three, or Tic-Tac-No!

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Math concepts: slope, logical strategy
Number of players: 2 or more
Equipment: 4×4 or larger grid, pebbles or other tokens to mark squares

Set Up

Alexandria Jones and her brother Leon played Avoid Three with pebbles on a grid scratched in the sand, but you can also use pencils or markers on graph paper. You need a rectangular playing area at least 4×4 squares large. The bigger your grid, the longer your game.

Continue reading Game: Avoid Three, or Tic-Tac-No!