This game pushes students to consider area and perimeter beyond the basic shapes.
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: area, square units, perimeter, regular and irregular polygons.
Players: two to four.
Equipment: homemade game cards, pencils or markers.
Nim is a pure strategy game for two players. On each turn, players remove an option until finally no choice remains.
Game options might include:
The rules can vary at the players’ whim (as long as both players agree). How many possibilities do you start with, what are the rules for removing options, and how do you win or lose the game? Everything is open to change. And with every tweak, players must reanalyze their strategy.
Welcome to the 184th 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.
With all the links, a blog carnival can feel overwhelming. Bookmark this article, so you can take your time reading the posts.
“Living math” means bringing our children face-to-face with the big ideas of mathematics to help them develop their reasoning skills. When the ideas of math come to life for our children, their minds delight in seeing how numbers and shapes connect to each other and exploring these relationships.
Scattered between the playful math links below, you’ll find quotations from my new book Charlotte Mason’s Living Math, along with several paintings of children playing and learning which I considered for the book but ran out of room.
By tradition, we start the carnival with a puzzle/activity in honor of our 184th edition. But if you’d rather jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here to see the Table of Contents.
There’s a new Math Game Monday this week.
Have your kids tried it yet?
This week’s game is one of my favorites for upper-elementary and middle school students, offering plenty of practice doing estimation and mental math with fractions. Or you might prefer last week’s game, featuring a classic two-player logic puzzle that develops strategic reasoning.
Or, if you’re reading this post later and missed those, there’s another great new game this week for you to play.
Check it out:
“Play and rigor support each other.
“When students are invited to play with math, they learn more deeply, more robustly, and remember more consistently.
“Play is promoted as something that can engage kids and give them a more positive attitude about school, but it’s easy to assume that it’s not useful for learning, when in reality the opposite is true:
“The student who is playing tends to be the student who is learning most deeply.”
—Dan Finkel, Math for Love newsletter
I continue to dig myself out of the avalanche of tasks that built up during the years that I spent mostly down south with my mom as she was weakening.
But here are two tidbits of mathy fun that came across my desk recently, which I think you’ll enjoy…
ALL my math game books are on sale now at the Playful Math Store.
What a great way to prepare for a summer of mathematical play!
I have a new podcast interview, and I think you’ll enjoy it!
Check out Cindy Rollins’s The New Mason Jar on your favorite podcast app, or listen on the website:
Here’s an excerpt…
Here are three quick math games you can fit in whenever you have a few minutes’ free time. Have fun playing math with your kids!
And if you enjoy these games, check out my Math Journaling Adventures project to discover how similar playful writing activities can help your students learn mathematics. Preorder your books today!
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
