[Photo by Arwen Abendstern.]
If a girl and a half
can read a book and a half
in a day and a half,
then how many books can one girl read in the month of June?
Kitten reads voraciously, but she decided to skip our library’s summer reading program this year. The Border’s Double-Dog Dare Program was a lot less hassle and had a better prize: a free book! Of course, it didn’t take her all summer to finish 10 books.
How fast does Kitten read?
The carnival is up at Ramblings of a Math Mom, a day late but well worth the wait:
Mathmom herself wrote a wonderful post for the carnival, which I was glad to see. I’ve missed her!
Here’s a puzzle I found to fritter away time while I was waiting for the carnival:
[Warning: The answers are in the same blog post, so don’t scroll down until you’ve tried the puzzle!]
[Photo by fdecomite.]
UPDATE
See the new, expanded games post here:
Over the years, Let’s Play Math! blog has grown into a sprawling mess of 480+ posts, which can make it very hard to find the specific math tip you’re looking for. The Archives page is nearly useless, with the articles organized by month of publication.
Therefore, I’ve begun putting together a Best of the Blog page, collecting the all-time favorite blog posts from each category. [It’s done! :D]
And where better to start than with my top hands-on activities?
Skim. Click. Explore. Have fun!
[Photo by internets_dairy.]
Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers! If you like to learn new things and play around with ideas, you are sure to find something of interest. Let’s start the mathematical fun with an arithmetic card game in honor of our 24th edition and a few number puzzles:
[Photo by pfala.]
Did you know that playing games is one of the Top 10 Ways To Improve Your Brain Fitness? So slip into your workout clothes and pump up those mental muscles with the 2010 Mathematics Game!
Use the digits in the year 2010 to write mathematical expressions for the counting numbers 1 through 100.
- All four digits must be used in each expression. You may not use any other numbers except 2, 0, 1, and 0.
- You may use the arithmetic operations +, -, x, ÷, sqrt (square root), ^ (raise to a power), and ! (factorial). You may also use parentheses, brackets, or other grouping symbols.
- You may use a decimal point to create numbers such as .1, .02, etc.
- Multi-digit numbers such as 20 or 102 may be used, but preference is given to solutions that avoid them.
Bonus Rule
You may use the overhead-bar (vinculum), dots, or brackets to mark a repeating decimal.[Note to teachers: This rule is not part of the Math Forum guidelines. It makes a significant difference in the number of possible solutions, however, and it should not be too difficult for high school students or advanced middle schoolers.]
While browsing the Kim Komando website for ideas I could use in my blogging class, I followed a rabbit trail through Kim’s video archive. I think we will try this in Math Club next semester:
If the embedded video doesn’t work on your computer, you can find the original here: Unbelievable Paper Transformer.
Simon posted a template for the puzzle at his MathsClass blog.
[Photo by shonk.]
Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers! If you like to learn new things and play around with ideas, you are sure to find something of interest.
Let’s start the mathematical fun with a couple of puzzles in honor of our 20th edition: First, the shape to our right is an icosahedron, one of the Platonic solids. Each face is an equilateral triangle — can you count them? For more fun, make your own model.
[Photo by jaaron.]
Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers! We accept entries from anyone who enjoys playing around with math, as long as the topic is relevant to students or teachers of preK-12th grade mathematics.
Some articles were submitted by their authors, other were drawn from the back-log in my blog reader, and I’ve spiced it all up with a few math jokes courtesy of the Mathematical humor collection of Andrej and Elena Cherkaev.
Let the mathematical fun begin…
[Ragged Squares Quilt photos used with permission from Crazy Mom Quilts.]
I know other teachers have done math quilts, but I’ve never gotten around to trying it in any of my classes. Still, this image caught my eye and practically begged me to make it into a math lesson for my elementary math club.
I thought of at least two ways I could go with this, but I bet that if we put our brains together, we can come up with even more creative ideas. So here’s the question, ala Dan Meyer:
How could you use this image as a springboard to doing math? What questions would you ask? What concepts would you try to get across? What would you follow it with? Please comment!
Other photos are available…
[Photo by jimmiehomeschoolmom.]
One of the things I meant to do with my elementary math class (the one that got canceled due to low enrollment):
And then we would play around with Tangram puzzles, and perhaps make up a few of our own.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 