My Math Journaling Adventures Series is now available on Kickstarter.
I love these books!
Writing is one of the best ways to learn math deeply, because wrestling our thoughts into words forces us to figure out what we really believe.
It’s the natural, no-stress way to build our children’s understanding and confidence.
Hit the button to visit the campaign and order your books:
Math Journaling Adventures Kickstarter ❯
Continue reading Why I Love the Math Journaling Adventures Series
And so it begins: the Math Journaling Adventures is LIVE on Kickstarter!
⭐ Don’t delay! First-day backers get the best deals. Choose one of the Earlybird rewards:
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.
Continue reading Math Journaling Adventures Launched: Order Your Copy Today
I have a new podcast interview, and I think you’ll enjoy it!
Check out Pam Barnhill’s Homeschool Better Together on your favorite podcast app, or listen on the website:
Here’s an excerpt…
Welcome to the sweet-16 birthday edition of the Playful Math Carnival. Originally called Math Teachers at Play, our first carnival was published in February 2009.
Each Playful Math Carnival offers a smorgasbord 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.
There’s so much playful math to enjoy!
By tradition, we start the carnival with a math activity in honor of our 179th edition. But if you’d rather jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here to see the Table of Contents.
Continue reading Playful Math 179: Our Sweet Sixteen Carnival
Coming Soon! On March 3, I’ll be launching the first installment in my new book series, the Math Journaling Adventures.
You’ll love these books because they make creative math investigations open-and-go for busy parents and teachers.
And the Kickstarter prelaunch page is now live. That means you can sign up to get an email from Kickstarter as soon as the campaign launches:
If you back the campaign on launch day, you can catch a great deal with the Earlybird discount pledge levels.
Lately, I’ve spent most of my writing time thinking about the value of narration—the Charlotte Mason approach to teaching by getting kids to put ideas in their own words.
For students, I’m writing a new series of Math Adventure Journals to get them thinking about math and putting those thoughts into words. If you’re interested, sign up to be notified when the Kickstarter goes live.
But we parents can harness the value of narration in our own learning. After all, one of the best ways we can help our children learn mathematics (or anything else) is to be lifelong learners ourselves.
To that end, I’ve decided to relaunch my “Morning Coffee” series of professional development posts for homeschooling parents.
Welcome to the 178th edition of the Playful Math Education Blog Carnival — a smorgasbord 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.
Bookmark this post, so you can take your time browsing.
There’s so much playful math to enjoy!
By tradition, we start the carnival with a puzzle/activity in honor of our 178th edition. But if you’d rather jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here to see the Table of Contents.
I recently listened to you on Cindy Rollins’ podcast, and I was captivated by your perspective on math. It was exciting, freeing, and wonder-filled. I would absolutely love to be able to teach in the ways you described.
We use early-elementary Saxon Math right now, which is thorough, but has SO MUCH to do that I’ve always struggled to do it all. Then I feel like I’m missing things, and I never know quite what is important. And yet, the actual lessons move so slowly that my kids get bored with the repetition.
I use a published curriculum because I have no idea of an appropriate scope and sequence, or similar flow of learning. With your playful approach to math, how do I know where to start, and what to do each day?
Do you have a suggested order to approach your books to have a full math approach? A sort of curriculum, per se, using your books.
[For those who missed my chat with Cindy Rollins about a Charlotte Mason approach to math, you can listen to it here.]
Continue reading FAQ: Can I Use Your Books as a Math Curriculum?
“I love your image of math as a nature walk. My children are ready to start their homeschooling journey, and I want to put them on the right track from the beginning. How can I help them think about math and problem-solving without using a textbook?”
The most difficult part of teaching our children real math is to change our own way of thinking about the subject you’ve already taken that step, so it looks like your family’s learning journey is off to a great start.
[For readers who are wondering what I mean by math as a nature walk, check out this post. You may also enjoy my article on natural learning: Math with Young Children.]
Perhaps you’ve heard me mention the oral story problem game. It was one of my favorite ways to get my children thinking about math, back in our early days of homeschooling. We played in the car on the way to soccer practice, or while we washed dishes, or sitting in the lobby waiting for a doctor’s appointment.
The rules are simple: I’ll make up a math problem for you to solve. And then you make up one for me.
The kids always loved trying to stump me.
This problem from Henry Ernest Dudeney’s Amusements in Mathematics reminded me of those days. This is exactly the way my eldest loved to torture me…
