After months of editing, formatting, proofreading, sweat, and tears:
Teresa Gaskins’s new ebook Hunted: The Riddled Stone ~ Book Two is available now at Amazon worldwide.
You can download the first five chapters here:
To celebrate the release of Hunted, the ebook version of Banished—the first book in the Riddled Stone series—will be on sale for 99 cents for the next few weeks.
Math Concepts: sorting by attribute (card suits), counting up, counting down, standard rank of playing cards (aces low).
Players: two or more, best with four to six.
Equipment: one complete deck of cards (including face cards), or a double deck for more than six players. Provide a card holder for young children.
Deal out all the cards, even if some players get more than others. The player to the dealer’s left begins by playing a seven of any suit. If that player does not have a seven, then the play passes left to the first player who does.
After that, on your turn you may lay down another seven or play on the cards that are already down. If you cannot play, say, “Pass.”
Once a seven is played in any suit, the six and the eight of that suit may be played on either side of it, forming the fan. Then the five through ace can go on the six in counting-down order, and the nine through king can go on the eight, counting up. You can arrange these cards to overlap each other so the cards below are visible, or you can square up the stacks so only the top card is seen.
The May “Let’s Play Math” newsletter went out Monday morning to everyone who signed up for Tabletop Academy Press math updates.
This month’s issue focuses on math games, from Rosie’s Princess in the Dungeon to Jim Pai’s Trig & Logarithm War. What fun!
If you missed this month’s edition, no worries — there will be more playful math snacks coming soon. Click the link below to sign up today!
And remember: Newsletter subscribers are always the first to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
Students can explore prime and non-prime numbers with these free favorite classroom games:
For $15-20 you can buy a downloadable file of the beautiful, colorful, mathematical board game Prime Climb. Or pick up the full Prime Climb game box at Amazon.
Or you can try the following game by retired Canadian education professor Jerry Ameis:
Math Concepts: multiples, factors, composite numbers, and primes.
Players: only two.
Equipment: pair of 6-sided dice, 10 squares each of two different colors construction paper, and the game board (click the image to print it, or copy by hand).
On your turn, roll the dice and make a 2-digit number. Use one of your colored squares to mark a position on the game board. You can only mark one square per turn.
The first player to get three squares in a row (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) wins. Or for a harder challenge, try for four in a row.
* * *
This game was featured in the Math Teachers At Play (MTaP) math education blog carnival: MTaP #79. Hat tip: Jimmie Lanley.
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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!
“Math Games with Factors, Multiples, and Prime Numbers” copyright © 2015 by Denise Gaskins. Image at the top of the post copyright © Jimmie via flickr (CC BY 2.0).
[Feature photo by Tomruen via Wikimedia Commons.]
Do you enjoy math? I hope so! If not, browsing the articles linked in this post just may change your mind.
Welcome to the 85th edition of the Math Teachers At Play math education blog carnival—a smorgasbord of links to bloggers all around the internet who have great ideas for learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to pre-college.
By tradition, we start the carnival with a short puzzle or activity. But if you would like to jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here to see the Table of Contents.
Let the mathematical fun begin!
Featured photo above by Richard Riley via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
Finally, the first two books of my math games series are finished and loaded up on Amazon.com (and the other Amazons worldwide). To celebrate, I’m offering an introductory sale price this weekend: US$2.99 per book, now through Monday.[Sorry, expired.]
Are you tired of flashcards and repetitive worksheets? Now your children can practice their math skills by playing games.
Math games pump up mental muscle, reduce the fear of failure, and develop a positive attitude toward mathematics. Through playful interaction, games strengthen a child’s intuitive understanding of numbers and build problem-solving strategies. Mastering a math game can be hard work, but kids do it willingly because it is fun.
Continue reading They’re Here! Math You Can Play Weekend Sale
Math Concepts: addition to thirty-one, thinking ahead.
Players: best for two.
Equipment: one deck of math cards.
Lay out the ace to six of each suit in a row, face-up and not overlapping, one suit above another. You will have one column of four aces, a column of four twos, and so on—six columns in all.
The first player flips a card upside down and says its number value. Then the second player turns down a card, adds it to the first player’s number, and says the sum.
Players alternate, each time turning down one card, mentally adding its value to the running total, and saying the new sum out loud. The player who exactly reaches thirty-one, or who forces the next player to go over that sum, wins the game.
Math Concepts: counting up to five, thinking ahead.
Players: two or more.
Equipment: none.
Each player starts with both hands as fists, palm down, pointer fingers extended to show one point for each hand. On your turn, use one of your fingers to tap one hand:
The last player with a live hand wins the game.
Feature photo above by Nicolas Raymond (CC BY 3.0).
The April “Let’s Play Math” newsletter went out Monday morning to everyone who signed up for Tabletop Academy Press math updates.
This month’s issue focused on Math Treks — math scavenger hunts in your neighborhood or at a mall or local park. What fun!
If you missed this month’s edition, no worries — there will be more playful math snacks coming soon. Click the link below to sign up today!
And remember: Newsletter subscribers are always the first to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
Six years ago, my homeschool co-op classes had fun creating this April calendar to hand out at our end-of-semester party. Looking at my regular calendar today, I noticed that April this year starts on Wednesday, just like it did back then. I wonder when’s the next time that will happen?
A math calendar is 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 your family can treat each day like a mini-review quiz: “Do you remember how to calculate this?”
The calendar my students made is appropriate for middle school and beyond, but you can make a math calendar with puzzles for any age or skill level. Better yet, encourage the kids to make puzzles of their own.
At home:
Post the calendar on your refrigerator. Use each math puzzle as a daily review “mini-quiz” for your children (or yourself).
In the classroom:
Post today’s calculation on the board as a warm-up puzzle. Encourage your students to make up “Today is…” puzzles of their own.
As a puzzle:
Cut the calendar squares apart, then challenge your students to arrange them in ascending (or descending) order.
If you like, you may use the following worksheet:
Submission details here: Kids’ Project — More Math Calendars?
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 
![[Feature photo by Tomruen via Wikimedia Commons.]](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:9-demicube_t05_A5.svg){kind=link}