Homeschool Math Blog

I recently put a few exercises about star polygons into the new Math Mammoth grade 5 geometry section that I'm revising, and thought I'd share some printables here as well. What are star polygons? They are polygons that look somewhat like a star. You can form them  by joining the vertices of a regular polygon in a certain manner. For example: I put the star polygon worksheets on this page .  They are PDF files, enabled for annotation, so you can actually fill them in (draw in them) using Adobe Reader on the computer. You will find a worksheet from pentagram (5 points) all the way up to dodecagram (12 points). Here's one example (nonagram worksheet): Then there are also printable worksheets with empty polygons where students can experiment and create their own star polygons. There are more at this link . Lastly, I also made some blank worksheets with various regular polygons. These are for any of you, teachers or otherwise, who would like to maybe hav...

Homeschool Buyers Co-op is right now running a GROUP BUY for the large Math Mammoth and Make It Real Learning bundles. The discount will be 20% - 50% depending on the number of participants. The sale runs till January 31, 2013. (Homeschoolers only.)

If you will allow... :)  This is my 8-year old daughter's website that she recently was able to put online: Children's Best Activities I especially like her "find-the-twins" printables - in other words, find the matching pairs (good for kindergarten/preschool). She made most of those herself, and some of them are tricky! (A few were taken from a clipart collection we own rights to--that's where she got the idea for them.) Of course I've had to help her, but really only with the framework (website). She's created the content.

I wanted to mention... Aurora Lipper from Supercharged Science is again having one of her popular free teleclasses , this time about MAGNETISM . It is on Wednesday, 1/16 at 12:00 PM Noon Pacific Time. I heard she will guide kids step-by-step through building a real working electric motor! She'll also tell us about the Earth's 8 magnetic poles, explain how to detect magnetic fields, and about the mysterious link between electricity and magnetism that marks one of the biggest discoveries of all science... ever. Sign up here: www.sciencelearningspace.com/members/go.php?r=3095&i=l25

Math Mammoth is on sale -- 20% off  at Kagi ! Use the coupon code JANUARY . The sale starts TODAY and runs for a week - the last day of the sale is next Monday (January 21). This includes all Math Mammoth and Make It Real Learning downloads and CD products at Kagi, including the already discounted bundles! You can go to MathMammoth.com first, then find the links to Kagi's order pages there. Or, you can use these direct links to the order pages: Light Blue series (complete curriculum) Blue series Golden and Green Series Make It Real Learning activity workbooks . Bundles (CDs or downloads) .

This is an interesting math competition! Reel Math Challenge is a math competition for 6th to 8th graders where students create and star in their own math videos. The idea is this: students will use one of 270 problems included in the 2012-2013 MATHCOUNTS School Handbook , and create a video teaching the problem using a real-world application of the math concept on which the selected problem is based. I've mentioned that book before. It is filled with great problems, and is an excellent problem solving resource for teachers and students alike. This competition is open to students in public schools and  home-schooled students in the United States. They just have to form teams of 4. You can get all the rules here . Registration is still open. The videos have to be finished and submitted by February 28, 2013, so hurry!

Look at this NEAT visual representation of the counting numbers: (originally from Mike Naylor ) The first activity you can give to your students or children is to figure out HOW it is made! What is it based on? The last number on this chart is 49. Can you figure out how to make the next number, 50? Malke shared a cool factor domino game with her readers. We played it, too. Here's one of our games: (We had a few cards that were not the same size; just ignore that.) Basically, you may put a card next to another if they share a factor. Using these visual dominoes makes children easily learn about factors and factorization. Please visit Malke's blog to read the rules and see more details. Here are a few other things you can do with these cards: 1) Organize them in some way. For example, you could find all multiples of 5,  all multiples of 4, or all primes. 2) Pick up two cards randomly and tell their least common multiple (LCM). This can easily be done i...

Image by dmelchordiaz Looking for free probability worksheets? On my site, you can find some probability worksheets and lessons in my book Math Mammoth Statistics and Probability - for about grades 5-7. Math Mammoth Grade 7 worksheet collection also has just a few. Beyond that, there are several fine websites that offer collections of FREE probability worksheets, mainly for middle school level, when students first study probability: Image by Doug88888 Math Worksheets 4 Kids - probability worksheets This site offers a nice variety of probability worksheets, using dice, coins, cards, marbles, spinners, and so on. Most are about simple probability, but one section has worksheets for compound probability (independent/dependent events section). Teach-nology.com statistics and probability This site has some variety: topics not only include simple probability but also dependent events, word problems, and experimental probability. Image by cobalt Compound events worksh...

Happy Year 2 0 1 3 ! The 2013 mathematics game is a neat game with numbers, suitable for many ages. The basic idea is very simple: using the digits from 2013, form mathematical expressions for the counting numbers 1-100. You have to use every digit 2, 0, 1, and 3. For example, number 5 could be formed as (2 + 3) × 1 + 0 = 5 OR (2 + 3) ÷ 1 + 0 = 5 OR 3! − 2 + 1 + 0 = 5 (3! is 3 factorial, which means 1 × 2 × 3) You can even use decimals: .2 /0.1 + 3 + 0 = 5 So, the task is to do this for numbers 1-100! For smaller students, you could limit it to numbers 1-10. Please see Denises's post for the full rules and other info. Have fun!