Puzzles can be fun ways to idle away a stormy afternoon. Or they can be doorways into the world of math, invitations to explore.
And puzzles are great for teaching, too!
Here is a puzzle from a master of mathematical ingenuity…
This game tests each player’s risk tolerance as they roll dice to rack up points.
Many parents remember struggling to learn math. We hope to provide a better experience for our children. And one of the best ways for children to enjoy learning is through hands-on play.
So what are you waiting for? Let’s play some math!
This game tests each player’s risk tolerance as they roll dice to rack up points.
Math Concepts: addition, probability of dice rolls, strategic thinking.
Players: two or more.
Equipment: two 6-sided dice, pen and paper for keeping score.
Recently, I stumbled on an old blog post featuring Singapore Math problems, and it brought back memories.
Back when my children were young, the original Primary Math series from Singapore was one of my favorite math curricula. I tweaked our school program constantly, so none of my kids had the same education, but three of them spent a good part of their elementary years in those books.
And I followed the Math in Singapore 2007 blog for its single season of publication. The blog has gone the way of many others, preserved only in the Internet Archive.
In the post I re-discovered, Patsy Wang-Iverson was reporting on a week-long seminar organized by Celine Koh, who offered the following problems (adapted from school exams and study books) for teacher discussion.
How many can you solve?
This challenging game stretches everyone’s working memory and offers children the delightful possibility of stumping an adult.
Many parents remember struggling to learn math. We hope to provide a better experience for our children. And one of the best ways for children to enjoy learning is through hands-on play.
So what are you waiting for? Let’s play some math!
Math Concepts: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, integers, fractions, factoring, powers and roots, prime numbers, and other number properties.
Players: two or more (a cooperative game).
Equipment: none.
Continue reading Math Game Monday: The Number That Must Not Be Named
Writing to Learn Math: Number play doesn’t have to follow school math methods.
Do you want your children to develop the ability to reason creatively and figure out things on their own?
Help kids practice slowing down and taking the time to fully comprehend a math topic or problem-solving situation with these classic tools of learning: Notice. Wonder. Create.
This game lays a great foundation for your child’s understanding of multiplication and fractions.
Many parents remember struggling to learn math. We hope to provide a better experience for our children. And one of the best ways for children to enjoy learning is through hands-on play.
So what are you waiting for? Let’s play some math!
Math Concepts: multiplication or fraction models, visual/spatial memory.
Players: any number.
Equipment: one deck of math model cards.
Continue reading Math Game Monday: Concentration with Math Model Cards
Writing to Learn Math: Measurement is our way of connecting numbers to the things we find in the world, in daily life.
Do you want your children to develop the ability to reason creatively and figure out things on their own?
Help kids practice slowing down and taking the time to fully comprehend a math topic or problem-solving situation with these classic tools of learning: Notice. Wonder. Create.
One of the stretch goals for my Charlotte Mason’s Living Math Kickstarter campaign is to add a math journaling prompt to the end of each chapter. So, I’ve been playing around with ideas to get readers writing.
Since the book’s all about how to build mathematical reasoning, I’m looking for ways to prompt creative thinking and flexibility in math calculations.
I found some fun ideas in Guy Gattegno and Martin Hoffman’s Handbook of Activities for the Teaching of Mathematics (which you can download here), including the following riff off a puzzle created by Lewis Carroll.
Mental math is doing calculations with our minds, though we can use scratch paper or whiteboards to make notes as we work.
Doing mental math, children use the basic principles of arithmetic to simplify problems so they can think about number relationships, mastering the basic structures of how numbers work, the same structures that underlie algebraic reasoning.
As always, we rely on two key mental-math strategies.
Division is the mirror image of multiplication, the inverse operation that undoes multiplication, which means we are scaling numbers down into smaller parts. Important friendly numbers include halves, thirds, and tenths, plus the square numbers and any multiplication facts the student happens to remember.
By doing mental math, we help our children use the basic principles of arithmetic to simplify problems so they can think about number relationships, mastering the basic structures of how numbers work.
And the more our children practice these structures in mental math, the better prepared they will be to recognize the same principles in algebra.
The basic idea of subtraction is finding the difference between two quantities: comparing a larger amount to a smaller one, figuring out what’s left when you remove a part, or finding the distance between two measurements (or two points on the number line).
When you work with young children learning subtraction, remember our two key mental-math strategies.
For early subtraction with numbers less than 20, the most important friendly numbers are 5 and 10, the pairs of numbers that make 10, and the doubles.
When children apply their creative minds to reasoning about math, they can use friendly numbers to get close to an answer, and then tweak the result as needed.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 