Math Game Monday: Push the Penny

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
Math game push the penny

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.

This game offers young children a chance to practice counting and early addition skills while racing to beat their parents.

Push the Penny

Math Concepts: addition to one hundred, thinking ahead.

Players: two or more.

Equipment: playing cards (remove face cards and jokers), a hundred chart, and a penny or other small token.

Continue reading Math Game Monday: Push the Penny

Math Game Monday: Two-Digit Number Train

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

This game makes players think about place value and probability as they race to complete their number train.

“Two-Digit Number Train” is an excerpt from Math You Can Play Combo: Number Games for Young Learners, available as an ebook at my bookstore (Thank you for cutting out the middleman!) and in ebook or paperback through many online retailers. Read more about my playful math books here.

The Math Game Monday posts will be available for one week only. If you missed this one, explore the Topic Tag links in the sidebar. There are more than forty free games scattered around the blog. Have fun playing math with your kids!

Math Game Monday: Forty-Niners

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

This game pushes players to risk everything in a gold-rush of addition practice.

“Forty-Niners” is an excerpt from Addition & Subtraction: Math Games for Elementary Students, available as an ebook at my bookstore (Thank you for cutting out the middleman!) and in ebook or paperback through many online retailers. Read more about my playful math books here.

The Math Game Monday posts will be available for one week only. If you missed this one, explore the Topic Tag links in the sidebar. There are more than forty free games scattered around the blog. Have fun playing math with your kids!

Get a Weekly Dose of Playful Math

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Our leaves haven’t started to turn yet, but summer’s on the wane, farmers are busy with harvest, and the back-to-school rush has calmed down into a daily routine.

But if you’re like me, you keep tweaking that routine, constantly looking for the perfect balance for your family or classroom. I especially love to discover easy ways to add more playful math to our schedule.

So here’s a collection of sites that offer fresh math resources on a weekly or monthly basis throughout the school year.

Which one will you try?

KenKen Classroom

Every week, they’ll email you a set of free KenKen arithmetic puzzles for all ages. As the challenge level subtly shifts week to week, students develop their math and logical thinking skills without even knowing it.

Subscribe ❯

#MathStratChat

Pose an interesting math problem. How can you figure it out? What else could you do? How many different ways can you find? Which strategy do you like best for this problem?

Follow Pam Harris on your favorite social media site to get a new problem every Wednesday.

Choose a Problem ❯

The Parallel Universe

Dr Simon Singh, author of the No. 1 bestseller Fermat’s Last Theorem and The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets has created a set of weekly maths challenges – just 15-30 minutes of interesting, fun and challenging tidbits of mystery and history, activities and oddities, puzzles and problems.

Help students expand their mathematical horizons beyond the school curriculum and build strong mathematical thinking skills. Stretch your brain every week!

Learn More ❯

Numberless Word Problems

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

As I mentioned yesterday, my new book includes links to online resources to help you play with word problems. So this week, I’m sharing a few of my favorites.

Visit the Kickstarter

Today we examine a time-tested method to help kids reason about math: Leave out the numbers.

First up, there’s Brian Bushart’s numberless problem bank for young students. Then we’ll look at Farrar Williams’s modern revision of a math teaching classic with problems for upper-elementary and middle school students.

Have fun thinking math with your kids!

Word Problem Bank

Word problems are commonplace in mathematics classrooms, and yet they regularly confound students and lead to frustrated teachers saying things like:

  • “They just add all the numbers! It doesn’t matter what the problem says.”
  • “They don’t stop to think! They just start computing as soon as they’re done reading the problem.”

Brian Bushart offers a collection of ready-to-go slide presentations that walk through the steps of making a word problem make sense.

Visit the Site

Math With No Numbers

Discover Farrar Williams’s book Numberless Math Problems: A Modern Update of S.Y. Gillian’s Classic Problems Without Figures, available in ebook or paperback.

Williams writes: “In order to answer the question, they’ll have to explain it, because the problem doesn’t give you anything to calculate with. The only way to answer is by explaining your process. See how sneaky a numberless problem is? It makes students really think about the process of solving the problem.”

Find Out More

“When students face a word problem, they often revert to pulling all the numbers out and “doing something” to them. They want to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them, without really considering which operation is the right one to perform or why.

    “When you don’t have numbers, it sidesteps that problem.

      “For students who freeze up when they see the numbers, this can be a really good way to get them to think about their process with math.”

      —Farrar Williams, Math With No Numbers

      CREDITS: Feature photo (top) by saeed karimi via Unsplash.com.

      How Will You Celebrate this Epic Twosday?

      Posted on by Denise Gaskins

      Tomorrow is Tuesday 2/22/22 (or 22/2/22, if you prefer). What a wonderfully epic Twosday!

      Here’s a puzzle your family or class may enjoy…

      The “All 2s” Challenge

      Use only the digit 2, and try to use as few of them as you can for each calculation. You may use any math operations you know.

      For example:
      0 = 2 − 2
      8 = 2 + 2 + 2 + 2

      • Can you find a way to make 8 using fewer than four 2s?
      • What other numbers can you make?
      • Can you calculate all the numbers from 1–20? 1–100?

      Putting 2 in Perspective

      You might enjoy practicing your math art skills with this 2-digit challenge from Steve Wyborney.

      How many blocks make the digit 2? How did you count them?

      Advent Math Activity Calendars

      Posted on by Denise Gaskins

      Once again, the delightful Nrich Maths website offers a seasonal selection of activities to encourage your children’s (and your own!) mathematical creativity.

      Click the images below to visit the corresponding December Math Calendar pages.

      For Primary Students

      Here are twenty-four activities for elementary and middle school, one for each day in December during the run-up to Christmas.

      2021 Primary Advent Calendar

      When you get to the Nrich website, click a number to go to that day’s math.

      For Secondary Students

      Here are twenty-four favorite activities for middle and high school, one for each day in December in the run-up to Christmas.

      2021 Secondary Advent Calendar

      When you get to the Nrich website, click a number to go to that day’s math.

      More Holiday Math

      I encourage you also to explore my HUGE holiday math post:

      Or check out these pages for more ideas:

      Have fun playing math with your kids!

      What Is Multiplication, Anyway?

      Posted on by Denise Gaskins

      At some point during the process of teaching multiplication to our children, we really need to come to terms with this question:

      What IS multiplication?

      Did your device hide the video? Find it on YouTube here.

      “What’s my answer? It’s not one that society’s going to like. Because society expects — demands, even — that mathematics be concrete, real-world, absolute, having definitive answers.

        I can’t give a definitive answer.

          Multiplication manifests itself in different ways. So maybe the word ‘is’ there is just too absolute. And it’s actually at odds with what mathematicians do.

            Mathematicians do attend to real-world, practical scenarios — by stepping away from them, looking at a bigger picture.”

            —James Tanton, What is Multiplication?

            For Further Study

            You may also enjoy these posts from my blog archive:

            Memorizing the Times Table: A Life Skills Approach

            Posted on by Denise Gaskins

            Continuing on my theme of times table facts, here’s the inimitable James Tanton:

            Did your device hide the video? Find it on YouTube here.

            “If our task is to memorize this table, please make it about mathematics — about thinking your way through a challenge, and what can I do to make my life easier.”

            —James Tanton, Making Memorising Multiplication Facts (if one really must) a meaningful Life Skill Lesson

            For Further Study

            You may also enjoy my blog post series about working through the times tables, paying attention to mathematical relationships (and a bit of prealgebra) along the way.

            Times Tables Series

            Click the button to see the whole series. Scroll down to the first post to go through it in order.