Homeschool Math Blog

As most of you are taking a break from math or school work, here's a little (addictive) math game to play online or as printed version: Kenken. In it, you have to place the numbers in the grid kind of like in Sudoku so that no number appears twice in the same row or column, BUT there's an additional twist: it gives you "cages", and the numbers within a particular cage have to work to a given answer with a given math operation (either addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division). KenKen practices logical thinking and is, I think, more fun than Sudoku. It's easier to understand if you go see and try it yourself. The smaller sizes, such as 4x4 game, are great for kids, and the larger ones are good for us adults or older students. Kenken.com has nice Kenken puzzles online plus instructions, but only one for each size. MathDoku.com has an unlimited number of Kenken puzzles to play online in three sizes and several difficulty levels.

I recently received Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks from the author, Patrick Vennebush. This is a very comprehensive collection of math-related jokes that all "mathy" people will definitely enjoy, and math teachers could use this book to enliven their lessons. I have seen several of the jokes on the Internet, but never such a large collection. The jokes are categories into chapters such as One-Liners, ("A hungry clock goes back four seconds.") Graphic Jokes, (For example, "Cube Roots" picture you see on the cover of the book.) Three Dudes, (An engineer, a mathematician, and a chemist are...) Conversion Chart, (10 9 antics = 1 gigantic, or 454 graham crackers = 1 pound cake) Professions, ("The secretary of defense informed the president, 'Yesterday, three Brazilian soldiers were killed. 'Oh, no!' the president exclaimed. ... 'How many is a brazillion, anyway?' ") And so on. In each section, the jokes that require the le...