Homeschool Math Blog

Time to celebrate! I've been working hard on the various worksheet generators at HomeschoolMath.net , and now all of them make worksheets both in PDF and html formats! Below you can see examples of the variety of the worksheets: The advantage of the PDF format is that it's portable and you'll instantly see how it prints. The advantage of the html format is that you can edit it! Simply save the worksheet to your device and then open the file in a word processing software. The worksheets cover topics from grade 1 through pre-algebra, such as: all the basic operations, clock, money, measuring, fractions, decimals, percents, proportions, ratios, factoring, equations, expressions, graphing, geometry, square roots, and more. And it's all free. Enjoy!

Image credit Charlie Smith Some pointers/explanations in case you find these cryptic: A happy face to the power of -1 is the inverse of happy face. Happy face squared or cubed are pretty easy. "sup" in mathematics is the supremum of a set. Then we have a partial derivative of Happy Face. Next, sine of Happy Face = Happy Face sign by the road. In the second column, Re( :) ) is the real part of Happy Face, which is Happy Face without the eyes (without i's). Im of Happy Face is the imaginary part of Happy Face = the eyes (the i's). [Note, i is the imaginary unit used with imaginary numbers.] Triangle followed by X is the mathematical operation curl (of a vector). Next, the upside-down triangle is the gradient of Happy Face or "grad" of Happy Face. Lastly, Log or logarithm of Happy Face

Homeschool Buyers Co-op is running a GROUP BUY for large Math Mammoth bundles at 40% discount – just for one week! The offer expires on January 26, 2015.

From now till January 31, get 25% off of all Math Mammoth & Make It Real Learning downloads & CDs at Kagi store! Use the coupon code MAMMOTH at the order page at Kagi. At MathMammoth.com you can learn about the different books I sell and see samples. You will find links to Kagi's order pages on my site, on the various product pages. Or, if you are ready to order, you can use these direct links to the order pages: Order Light Blue series Order the South African version of the Light Blue series Order Blue series Order Spanish versions of the Blue series books Order Golden and Green Series Order Make It Real Learning activity workbooks Order Bundles (CDs or downloads) Order Review workbooks Remember also, I am always ready to help you find the best book/product for your situation. For many people, a good starting point is to administer the assessment test(s) . I will evaluate the results for free! Sincerely, Maria Miller

Math Mammoth printed books are on sale at Rainbow Resource Center starting today and running through January 19, 2015. The discount is 20%.

Someone recently asked me about showing work in math word problems and I thought others might enjoy hearing about this topic also. Personally, in the lower grades, I'd ask the child to EXPLAIN their thought processes orally, and then gradually teach them to write something on paper. The main thing students in grades 1-3 need to write is the actual calculations they did, not only the final answer. For example, if they added 23 and 87 to get the answer, they should write 23 + 87 = 110 and include the units of whatever it was, such as $23 + $87 = $110 or 23 cm + 87 cm = 110 cm. In the upper elementary grades (4-6) I'd like to see students write sentences and/or words in addition to the calculations so that another person can follow their solution. I'll give some examples. (from 4th grade) Mr. Jefferson travels from Paducah to Lexington and back, three times a month. What is his total mileage? (A map shows that the distance in question is 255 miles.) An example...

Heads-up! Rainbow Resource will run a sale on Math Mammoth printed books from Tuesday, January 13 till Monday, January 19.  (I don't know what the discount percentage will be).

Photo by Carol Vanhook If you don't know, this is a fun game where we try to make the numbers from 1 to 100 using the digits 2, 0, 1, 5 and various math operations. For example, you could write 25 − 10 or 5 + 1 − 2 + 0 or 5 × (2 + 1 + 0) or 50 / 2 − 1 etc. and you'll get various numbers. The challenge is to make ALL of them from 1 to 100! Take special note: square roots, exponents, and factorials are allowed. This means you can do 5 2 + 10, √ 25 − 10, and 0! + 1 + 2 + 5. You can even use decimals, such as .2 to make 5 × .2 + 10. You can submit your results to Math Forum . Denise at Let's Play Math also accepts submissions. Her rules are a tiny bit different from Math Forum's. Check out both: http://letsplaymath.net/2015/01/01/2015-mathematics-game/ http://mathforum.org/yeargames/ And have fun!