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Showing posts from April, 2014

Carnival time...

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Photo by Moyan Brenn on Flickr I was browsing this month's edition of Math Teachers at Play carnival yesterday - it's a really great blog carnival. I always find interesting thoughts and ideas there. My own entry was about challenging puzzles . This time I enjoyed reading about decimals in a one-frame and Why I Always Lead with the Punchline ...which was about letting students know what the goals are. and some others as well. Enjoy! :)

Fantastic math word problems

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Here's a weird/funny/fantastic math problem... But it also kind of highlights the word problems we often see in math books - like some have noted, it's only in math classes that trains travel towards each other on the same track, or someone buys 61 watermelons for himself , or people paint houses at identical speeds all day long , etc. All kinds of unrealistic situations. But, being a curriculum author myself, I know it's hard to make problems that would always perfectly relate to real life. In real life things (such as speed) vary a lot and are not constant, and such situations can be totally beyond students' ability to handle mathematically. So we first learn to handle the simple, though unrealistic, situations, such as everything traveling at a constant speed, and then from that, we can advance to calculus and learn the math for the real situation where the speed is changing all the time. That said, of course it's good to relate math to real life whe

A mathematical fib

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Did you know it's Math Awareness Month (MAM)? The website for MAM features a neat calendar which is filled with tricks, magic, and mystery for each day of April. You'll find knots, Möbius bands, infinity, spirals, tricks, and more :) For example, check out the card trick A Few Little Fibs and how it's based on mathematics: http://www.mathaware.org/mam/2014/calendar/fibs.html Now I'm ready to wow my girls. :)

Giveaway - Math Mammoth!

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It is time for a giveaway for my own products (Math Mammoth)! There will be 17 prizes! The "grand prize": ONE (1) winner will get Math Mammoth All Inclusive bundle - either a download or a CD TWO (2) winners will get Math Mammoth Light Blue Series bundle - either a download or a CD FOUR (4) winners will get Math Mammoth Blue Series bundle - either a download or a CD TEN (10) winners will get one grade level of Math Mammoth Light Blue series - download - the grade level is chosen by each winner. The winners will be chosen by a random number generator. Something SPECIAL This giveaway is COUPLED with something else... CDs by my favorite music group, 24K Gold Music. Each of the 17 winners has the CHOICE of also receiving a CD or a DVD by 24K Gold Music . There are four CDs to choose from. How will you know if you would like their music and which CD you might like? Please LISTEN to song clips on this page . And this page explains the CD c

Fraction lessons updated

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These fraction lessons on my site have been updated! They are complete lessons with varying exercises and word problems, and give you a great preview to my books Math Mammoth Fractions 1 and Math Mammoth Fractions 2 . Understanding fractions A fractional part of group Mixed numbers Fractions to mixed numbers and vv. Adding like fractions Equivalent fractions Adding unlike fractions 1 Adding unlike fractions 2: Finding the common denominator Adding mixed numbers Subtracting mixed numbers Subtracting mixed numbers 2 Measuring in inches Comparing fractions   Simplifying fractions Multiply fractions by whole numbers Multiply fractions by fractions Multiplication and area Simplify before multiplying Dividing fractions by whole numbers Dividing fractions: fitting the divisor Dividing fractions: reciprocal numbers Dividing fractions: using the shortcut

Giveaways at Educents

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Educents is celebrating their 1-year anniversary... with a SLEW of giveaways! You will want to see this -- dozens on giveaways on the same page (including one for Math Mammoth)! http://www.educents.com/educents-1-year-anniversary/ -