Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math
Helping families to learn and enjoy math together.
Learning math is more like taking a meandering nature walk than like climbing a ladder of one-topic-after-another. Kids need to wander around the concepts, notice things, wonder about them, and enjoy the journey.
— Denise Gaskins
from a comment on the Living Math Forum
CREDITS: Background photo courtesy of Annie Spratt on Unsplash.
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You don’t need a set of worksheets or lesson plans to learn math. All you need is an inquiring mind and something interesting to think about.
Play. Discuss. Notice. Wonder.
Enjoy.
— Denise Gaskins
Playing Complex Fractions with Your Kids
CREDITS: Background photo courtesy of Steve Shreve on Unsplash.
Want to help your kids learn math? Claim your free 24-page problem-solving booklet, and sign up to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
This fall, my homeschool co-op math class will play with math journaling.
But my earlier dot-grid notebooks were designed for adults. Too thick, too many pages. And the half-cm dot grid made lines too narrow for young writers.
So I created a new series of paperback dot-grid journals for my elementary and middle school students.
I hope you enjoy them, too!
Click here for more information
So, what can your kids do with a math journal?
Here are a few ideas:
I’m sure we’ll use several of these activities in my homeschool co-op math class this fall.
Learning math requires more than mastering number facts and memorizing rules. At its heart, math is a way of thinking.
So more than anything else, we need to teach our kids to think mathematically — to make sense of math problems and persevere in figuring them out.
Help your children learn to see with mathematical eyes, noticing and wondering about math problems.
Whenever your children need to learn a new idea in math, or whenever they get stuck on a tough homework problem, that’s a good time to step back and make sense of the math.
Kids can write their noticings and wonderings in the math journal. Or you can act as the scribe, writing down (without comment) everything child says.
For more tips on teaching students to brainstorm about math, check out these online resources from The Math Forum:
Problem-solving is a habit of mind that you and your children can learn and grow in. Help your kids practice slowing down and taking the time to fully understand a problem situation.
Almost anything your child notices or wonders can lead to a math experiment.
For example, one day my daughter played an online math game…
A math journal can be like a science lab book. Not the pre-digested, fill-in-the-blank lab books that some curricula provide. But the real lab books that scientists write to keep track of their data, and what they’ve tried so far, and what went wrong, and what finally worked.
Here are a few open-ended math experiments you might try:
Create math art. Check out my math doodling collection on Pinterest and my Dot Grid Doodling blog post. Can you draw an impossible shape?
I’d love to hear your favorite math explorations or journaling tips!
Please share in the comments section below.
P.S.: Do you have a blog? If you’d like to feature a math journal review and giveaway, I’ll provide the prize. Send a message through my contact form or leave a comment below, and we’ll work out the details.
Want to help your kids learn math? Claim your free 24-page problem-solving booklet, and sign up to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
My son can’t stand long division or fractions. We had a lesson on geometry, and he enjoyed that — especially the 3-D shapes. If we can just get past the basics, then we’ll have time for the things he finds interesting. But one workbook page takes so long, and I’m sick of the drama. Should we keep pushing through?
Those upper-elementary arithmetic topics are important. Foundational concepts. Your son needs to master them.
Eventually.
But the daily slog through page after page of workbook arithmetic can wear anyone down.
Many children find it easier to focus on math when it’s built into a game.
Take a look at Colleen King’s Math Playground website. Or try one of the ideas on John Golden’s Math Hombre Games blog page.
Or sometimes a story helps, like my Cookie Factory Guide to Long Division.
Games are great for practicing math your child has already learned. But for introducing new concepts, you’ll probably want to follow your textbook.
Still, even with textbook math, there are ways to make the journey less tedious:
Doing math in short sessions helped us avoid the emotional melt-downs my daughter used to have.
Thinking is hard work, and if I asked for too much, she would crash.
Because I sat with her and worked together every problem, I knew what she understood and when we could skip a problem. Or sometimes even jump several pages. Which meant that, even with short lessons, we still got through our book on time.
But as I said before, textbooks include a whole lot of repetition.
Too much repetition deadens the brain.
So we also took long breaks from our textbook program. Entire school-year-long breaks, just playing with math. Letting “enrichment” activities be our whole curriculum.
As healthy as vegetables are, you would never limit your son to eating just lima beans and corn.
Similarly, be sure to feed him a varied math diet.
For example, you can follow his interest in geometry beyond the standard school topics.
Explore tessellations, Escher art, and impossible shapes such as the Penrose triangle.
Building Lego scenes is a practical application of 3-D geometry. He might even want to try stop motion animation.
Talk about how math works in real life. Ponder the choices on John Stevens’s “Would You Rather?” blog or try some of the challenges at Andrew Stadel’s Estimation 180 website. Many of these require three-dimensional reasoning.
This is my second contribution to the blogging challenge #MTBoSBlaugust.
I’m aiming for at least one post each week. A simple, modest goal. But if I manage it, that will be four times the pace I’ve set in recent months.
Two posts down…
CREDITS: Frustrated Child photo by by Pixabay on Pexels.com. Penrose Lego by Erik Johansson via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). Homework Hands photo by Tamarcus Brown on Unsplash.
This post is an excerpt from my book Let’s Play Math: How Families Can Learn Math Together—and Enjoy It, as are many of the articles in my Let’s Play Math FAQ series.
Want to help your kids learn math? Claim your free 24-page problem-solving booklet, and sign up to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
“As we go through each lesson, it seems like my daughter has a good handle on the concepts, but when we get to the test she forgets everything. When I ask her about it, she shrugs and says, ‘I don’t know.’ What do you do when your child completely loses what she has learned?”
Forgetting is the human brain’s natural defense mechanism. It keeps us from being overwhelmed by the abundance of sensory data that bombards us each moment of every day.
Our children’s minds will never work like a computer that can store a program and recall it flawlessly months later.
Sometimes, for my children, a gentle reminder is enough to drag the forgotten concept back out of the dust-bunnies of memory.
Other times, I find that they answer “I don’t know” out of habit, because it’s easier than thinking about the question. And because they’d prefer to be doing something else.
And still other times, I find out they didn’t understand the topic as well as I thought they did when we went through it before.
No matter how we adults try to explain the concepts, some kids want to be answer-getters. They don’t want to do the hard work of thinking a concept through until it makes a connection in their minds. They want to memorize a few steps and crank through the lesson to get it over with.
In all these cases, what helps me the most is conversation.
My children and I always talk about our math. I ask questions like “What do you think? What do you remember? Can you explain the question to me? What are they asking for?”
And, whether the child’s answer is right or wrong, I practice my poker face. Trying not to give anything away, I ask, “How did you figure it out? Can you think of a way to confirm your answer?”
Not sure how to talk about math with your children?
If you have preschool and elementary-age kids, read Christopher Danielson’s inspiring book and blog:
For middle school and older students, check out Fawn Nguyen’s wonderful collection of Math Talks. Be sure to read the “Teachers” page for tips and talking points:
“You don’t need special skills to do this. If you can read with your kids, then you can talk math with them. You can support and encourage their developing mathematical minds.”
— Christopher Danielson
Talking Math with Your Kids
Games are a great way to practice math. Check out these (free!) math games for all ages:
And if you have elementary-age children, here are a few grade-level tips to help them learn (and remember) math concepts:
Credits: Girl in field photo by SOURCE Hydration Systems and Sandals technology via Flickr. (CC BY 2.0) Nigerian classroom photo by Doug Linstedt and young girl studying by pan xiaozhen on Unsplash.
This post is an excerpt from my book Let’s Play Math: How Families Can Learn Math Together—and Enjoy It, as are many of the articles in my Let’s Play Math FAQ series.
Want to help your kids learn math? Claim your free 24-page problem-solving booklet, and sign up to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
Once again, some of my favorite websites offer a seasonal selection of activities to encourage your children’s (and your own!) mathematical creativity, one for each day in the run-up to Christmas.
Including an especially-tough Advent meta-puzzle for truly determined problem-solvers…
Click the images below to visit the corresponding December Math Calendar home pages.
Easier activities for elementary and middle school.
Math puzzle fun, plus a printable coloring page.
When you get to the Nrich website, click a number to go to that day’s math.
Activities for middle and high school.
Each day features a challenge from the Short Problems Collection.
2017 Secondary Advent Calendar
When you get to the Nrich website, click a number to go to that day’s math.
“This year we’ve decided to bring you some of our favourite Plus videos. There’s nothing more soothing that a bit of fascinating maths, explained by a fascinating mathematician, that doesn’t even require you to read stuff. Happy watching!”
When you get to the +Plus Magazine website, you can tell which links are live because they jump to a larger size when you tap or mouse over the picture.
One link becomes live each day — so come back tomorrow and discover something new!
Or try your hand at the biggest mathematical mystery of them all — and save Christmas for Alex, Ben, and Carol!
Santa’s lost his memory, and the elves are cursed to alternate between lying and truth-telling. It’s up to you to piece together the clues and figure out which presents go where.
If you solve all the clues and enter the answer on Christmas day, you may win a present for yourself, too.
“Peanuts Christmas Panorama” photo [top] by Kevin Dooley via Flicker. (CCBY2.0)
Want to help your kids learn math? Claim your free 24-page problem-solving booklet, and sign up to hear about new books, revisions, and sales or other promotions.
