It began with some 4th-8th grade friends who met in my dining room to work math puzzles and play games. At first, a few of the kids wondered how anyone could have fun with math. But we did enjoy ourselves, and Math Club grew until we couldn’t fit anyone else around the table.
Skit: The Handshake Problem
[Feature photo above by Tobias Wolter (CC-BY-SA-3.0) via Wikimedia Commons.]
If seven people meet at a party, and each person shakes the hand of everyone else exactly once, how many handshakes are there in all?
In general, if n people meet and shake hands all around, how many handshakes will there be?
Our homeschool co-op held an end-of-semester assembly. Each class was supposed to demonstrate something they had learned. I threatened to hand out a ten question pop quiz on integer arithmetic, but instead my pre-algebra students presented this skit. You may adjust the script to fit the available number of players.
Puzzle: Logic Test
If you enjoy Raymond Smullyan’s The Lady or the Tiger and similar puzzles, you will probably have fun with this Logic test, posted by JD2718. JD has a wide variety of other math puzzles at his site, so take the time to browse a bit.
Story Problem Challenge Revisited
Well, I didn’t get any takers with the last story problem challenge. But school is in full session now, and we’re doing story problems in Math Club this Friday, so I thought I’d try again.
Here’s the challenge: Can you and your students make up some original math problems?
In Math Club, we always start by reading part of the book Math by Kids for inspiration. I can’t print those stories here, however, because of copyright rules, so I’ll share some of the stories my past students have made, arranged in roughly increasing order of difficulty. After you solve a couple of these problems with your children, encourage them to try making some of their own.
And please, share their gems with us!
Update
The problems below are now available as a printable handout: Story Problem Challenge.
2007 Mathematics Game
Are your students ready for a challenge?
The Math Forum: 2007 Mathematics Game will be a tricky one:
Use the digits in the year 2007 and the operations +, -, x, ÷, sqrt (square root), ^ (raise to a power), and ! (factorial), along with grouping symbols, to write expressions for the counting numbers 1 through 100.
- All four digits must be used in the expression.
- Only the digits 2, 0, 0, 7 may be used.
- Multi-digit numbers such as 20, 207, or .02 MAY be used this year.
- The square function may NOT be used.
- The integer function may NOT be used.
The Game That Is Worth 1,000 Worksheets
Have you and your children been struggling to learn the math facts? The game of Math Card War is worth more than a thousand math drill worksheets, letting you build your children’s calculating speed in a no-stress, no-test way.
Math concepts: greater-than/less-than, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, negative numbers, absolute value, and multi-step problem solving.
Story Problem Challenge
[Rescued from my old blog.]
Well, my computer is still being rebellious, so I’m at dh’s office again to check e-mail while the kids are gone to karate. But I thought it was high time I got another entry up on the blog…
One of my favorite activities for Math Club is to have my students write their own story problems. Then we pass the problems around so everyone can try to solve them. With all the discussion of problem solving on the math forum lately, I thought it would be fun to extend the challenge to you all. Can you come up with a word problem for us to practice our problem-solving skills on?
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 
