Math Storytelling Day

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Check out Nick Johnson’s Story of the innertube as a histogram.

Celebrate Math Storytelling Day by making up and sharing math stories. Everyone loves a story, so this is a great way to motivate your children to play around with math. What might a math story involve? Patterns, logic, history, puzzles, relationships, fictional characters, … and yes, even numbers.

What story will you tell?

 
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Are you looking for more creative ways to play math with your kids? Check out all my books, printable activities, and cool mathy merch at Denise Gaskins’ Playful Math Store. Or join my email newsletter.

This blog is reader-supported. If you’d like to help fund the blog on an ongoing basis, then please join me on Patreon (or choose the paid level on Substack) for mathy inspiration, tips, and an ever-growing archive of printable activities.

“Math Storytelling Day” copyright © 2010 by Denise Gaskins. Image at the top of the post copyright © Nick Johnson via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Measure the Earth: Useful Links

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

To find the latitude of your position:

To convert your latitude to a distance measurement:

  • GPS Latitude and Longitude Distance Calculator
    Enter your latitude, but enter 0 (zero) for longitude. Then enter 0 for both latitude and longitude for the equator. Click to calculate your distance to the equator in meters, km, feet, or miles.

[I will also add these to the original post.]

Quotable: Bad at Math

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

There’s a tendency for adults to label the math that they can do (such as identifying patterns, choosing between competing offers in a supermarket, and challenging statistics published by the government) as “common sense” and labeling everything they can’t do as “math” — so that being bad at math becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

— Rob Eastaway, Mike Askew
Old Dogs, New Math: Homework Help for Puzzled Parents

Still a couple of slots left in Sol’s book giveaway. I’ll be hosting a giveaway soon, too — so watch this spot!

Math Project: Measure the Earth

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Tomorrow, September 23, is the equinox — when night and day are equally balanced (or would be, if the sun appeared as a point, rather than a disc). If we lived on the equator, the sun would appear directly overhead at noon and would cast no shadow. Therefore, it’s a great day to perform Eratosthenes’ experiment of measuring the earth:

Continue reading Math Project: Measure the Earth

Alexandria Jones and the Mathematical Carnival

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Alexandria JonesMaria Jones hung up the phone and collapsed at the kitchen table. She buried her head in her hands and groaned. Alex looked up from her game of Solitaire.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Can’t-Say-No Syndrome, again?”

Mrs. Jones nodded. “This time I volunteered to plan an activity for next month’s homeschool group meeting.”

Leon wandered in and pulled an apple from the fruit bowl. “Ha!” he said. “She means she volunteered us to plan an activity, right?”

Mrs. Jones smiled. “That’s my motto: When in doubt, delegate!”

Continue reading Alexandria Jones and the Mathematical Carnival

Math Teachers at Play #30 via JD2718

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Check out the mathy blog entries in this month’s Math Teachers at Play blog carnival, hosted by Jonathan at jd2718. Topics range from preschool to high school, including songs, games and much more. Fun!

Welcome to the September 17, 2010 edition of math teachers at play. This is MTaP #30. This MTaP may look a little different. There is no theme weaving its way through and unifying the sections. We are not opening with a discussion of the number 30 (no matter how many cool things we could have come up with), and the sections are, um, different. It has occurred to some of us that the experience a student has in mathematics may differ greatly from p … Read More

via JD2718

Pirate Treasure: Free Elementary Math

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

CurrClick is running a Talk Like a Pirate Sale through Wednesday, October 22, and they hid 20 virtual treasure chests around their website — each with a free e-book inside. I haven’t found them all, but here are a couple of preschool and early-elementary treats:

Who knows what else may be hiding in those CurrClick treasure chests? Have fun exploring!

Sept-Oct 2010 Math Calendars

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

As I was preparing for Wednesday’s Homeschool Math Club Games & Activities meeting, I remembered my old math calendars and thought, that would be a fun activity to offer. So I pulled up the files and discovered that the days of the week matched perfectly. What a cool coincidence!

So in case you missed the math calendars last year, or in case it’s been long enough that your children have forgotten, here are the “new” versions:

Addendum

Umm Ahmad created an easier version for young students:

Continue reading Sept-Oct 2010 Math Calendars

Planning a New Math Club

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Photo by Waponi.]

A few years ago, I had several (potentially) future engineers in our homeschool math club, and we enjoyed the challenge of MathCounts and AMC puzzles — but the current crop of local homeschool students is another story.

Last year’s contest-based club meetings dwindled to one student. Even before the recent MathCounts rule changes, I knew I needed a new plan. The final straw was Kitten, whose moaning complaint that she “hates math” has begun to drive me crazy.

So, what’s a homeschool math teacher to do?

Continue reading Planning a New Math Club

Carnival of Mathematics 69 (via JD2718)

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Jonathan serves up plenty of fun in this month’s Carnival of Mathematics. And he will be hosting the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival in two weeks — submit your entries here.

Carnival of Mathematics 69

Normally a Carnival of Mathematics opens with a discourse on its ordinal. But 69?

It is 1000101 in binary, 1011 base 4, 105 base 8, 45 in hex… If we used 32 as a base?  25. And that would be 15 in base 64.

69 is odd. But there are as many odd numbers as there are ________. I still love that!  It is one of a bunch of surprises that Dave Richeson lists  at Divisio …

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via JD2718