Homeschool Math Blog

To celebrate the blogging year's end, I compiled a Top 10 list of my most popular blogposts during the year 2009. Some of these were current events, but most are actually timeless and can be helpful anytime, now or future. Maybe you'll find something interesting among these, as well! There have been 95 blogposts total this year, including this one. Top 10 Posts at Homeschool Math Blog, year 2009 1. Free algebra worksheets (January 3). This one was by far the most popular. I can see that, seeing as how many people would be looking for free algebra worksheets. 2. The World Math Day (February 8) 3. A conversion chart for measuring units (April 9) 4. A little trick for square roots (mental math) (January 8) 5. Massachusetts teachers' math exam (June 3) 6. Singapore math approach marches on.. to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (April 29) 7. A word problem Singapore way (May 30) 8. Making the fractions in a proportion (January 29) 9. Learn to recognize coins (August 14) 10. ...

Some of you might enjoy this article in New York Times: Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them It talks about a program called Building Blocks where preschoolers are taught simple math concepts, such as number symbols and counting. Kids that went through the program did much better in kindergarten math than those who did not. I had not realized that preschoolers are normally not taught much anything about numbers or counting. This program clearly proves how beneficial it is to do so, and how the kids' brains are definitely ready to learn counting at age 4 (and it can happen earlier, as well).

Today I wanted to highlight two companies that both offer lots of free high school level math materials in the form of videos. These are real, commercial companies, yet they have chosen to offer the videos online for free. Both have something else they sell, hoping to make some money obviously from that part of the business. The video content can really be of help for all students, teachers, or parents who need additional help with high school math (algebra, geometry, calculus). And since I'm highlighting these two, if you have a topic you have trouble with (such as polynomials or factoring or inequalities) you can even check out videos for that topic in both places. 1) BrightStorm Math . They currently have over 2,000 videos available for free - a free registration is required though. Algebra through calculus. What they are selling is test preparation courses. 2) MathTV.com MathTV.com has over 6,000 free math videos, including some in Spanish. Prealgebra through calculus. What the...

When you get time... perhaps over the holidays, go over to the most recent Math Teachers at Play carnival at Math Mama Writes, and enjoy the variety of blogposts revolving around math. I especially liked the estimation lesson , and the start of the proof that Pi is irrational . The proof looks familiar so am sure I've seen it in university sometime or another, but of course I don't exactly remember it on my own! Yet, I like being reminded of it, because Pi is a topic in middle school math, and I feel I'm a better teacher if I have at least a mental recognition that I've seen and understood the proof that it's irrational, even if I cannot exactly present the proof to the students. And then I also thought these dynamic applets to make nets for pyramids and other solids were neat.

I just read an interesting article today (HT goes to my husband) about men's and women's perceived intelligence. He's Not as Smart as He Thinks In a nutshell, men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ, BUT men tend to overestimate their IQ, and women tend to underestimate theirs!

This is a set of three geometry videos dealing with angles. First, showing that vertical angles are equal: Next, finding out about the angles in a parallelogram . I start out with two parallel lines and a transversal (line that intersects them both). We explore the angles formed, which some of them are corresponding angles, some are vertical angles. I draw a new line, and get a parallelogram. Lastly, here is a short and easy proof about the angles in a triangle .

I've finally ventured into geometry topics with my latest video: It shows how to use a protractor to measure angles . I show where the "base line" of the protractor is for three different protractors, and use it to find out the angle measure of different kinds of angles (including a reflex angle).