Homeschool Math Blog

  This is a wonderful story by a girl about her experiences with math... have your kids read it! Note how she learns when the teacher allows her to correct her mistakes in a test. I definitely advocate that. In fact, I give my kids HALF of the points they COULD have gotten at first, if they get a test question correct when they revise it.    Tests should be LEARNING tools, and help children learn, just like everything else we do in teaching them, and NOT "scary judgment devices".   https://blackwomenrockmath.com/blog/f/never-give-up

Several people have asked over the years about ROUNDING when estimating the result of a math problem. I finally wrote something to put online so I can refer people to that when they ask...  https://www.mathmammoth.com/lessons/rules_estimation   It seems to be a confusing topic! But really, in a nutshell, there are no exact rules. When estimating...   Consider your mental math skills. Round as little as possible, based on what YOU can calculate in your head. And, consider also how the rounding up or down will affect the final result . Sometimes it is better to round one number up and the other down, even though the technical rounding rules would dictate otherwise.

Codelover has finished another game for Math Mammoth practice! This one is for vertical or column addition . (Subtraction is coming soon.) Simple practice overall, but we spiced it up with colors, and Mathy my mascot is giving children feedback about their progress. 😁 And in the end there's a surprise animation. For grades 2-4.

Interesting! This is a mathematical dot-to-dot that's different from the routine...you can have your middle or high school students review integer operation, the order of operations, percentages, exponents, and other topics with these dot-to-dots.😊 https://mathshko.com/2020/01/04/number-dot-to-dot/

It's financial literacy month (April), so here's a free nice workbook: A Kid's Guide to Saving: An Interactive Workbook With 14 pages, the guide includes: A calculator that illustrates the magic of compound interest for a child’s understanding Budgeting worksheets to calculate how much to save and set savings goals A quiz to test their learning with a certificate of completion at the end

New! CodeLover made the "7 Up" card game for Math Mammoth practice... for addition facts where the sum is 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14. Check it out at https://www.mathmammoth.com/practice/seven-up

This week, CodeLover (my son) and I played this simple card game Seven Up... see https://mailchi.mp/911f9ade2135/seven-up You simply deal seven cards face up, and if any two of them make 10, or is 10, you remove those. (You need to remove the face cards from the deck before playing.) Then you simply deal more cards to the empty places and keep on going. If you can't remove any of the cards, deal 7 new cards on top of your existing cards. This simple game is quite fun and practices sums with 10. One question to ask is, do you always win? Can you always remove all the cards and have none left in the end of the game? Another question you can ask your child is, can this be played so the sum of the cards you remove is 11? or some other number? 😃 Have fun!

Where do I start with Math Mammoth? is a question I often hear (or read 😃 ). Most of the time, the best starting place is this page: https://www.mathmammoth.com/complete/placement_tests.php Looking over the tests will give you an idea of what is covered in each grade level of Math Mammoth. A natural next step is to administer a placement test or several (instructions for this process is explained on the page), but it's not always necessary to administer a test. Sometimes the teacher/parent can see just by looking at the tests, where the child would place. Often, the test reveals gaps, and you can use the TOPICAL books of the BLUE series to fill them in: https://www.mathmammoth.com/blue-series.php Or, you can use other materials you might have, or Khan Academy, etc. Sometimes it works out to use one of these review books to help a child get more solidified before starting a particular level in MM: https://www.mathmammoth.com/skills_review_workbooks/ https://www.m...

Here's a new Math Mammoth video review posted on Youtube. (It does cover some other elementary math programs also.)

Now you can practice more types of mental math at the Math Mammoth online practice section. 😄 We've added various types of exercises for adding & subtracting two-digit numbers mentally , mostly matching what is taught in Math Mammoth curriculum, in grades 1-2. For example, children can practice adding a two-digit number and a single-digit number WITH or WITHOUT regrouping... e.g. 45 + 3 is without regrouping, but 45 + 8 is with regrouping. Or they can practice adding/subtracting multiples of ten (56 - 30 or 34 + 60). See more examples in the image above! Here's the link for the online practice page (and it's AD-FREE, plus not made with Flash): Two-digit addition & subtraction practice – mental math .

New in the Math Mammoth online practice section! Fact families (addition & subtraction) Fact families is one of the main approaches I've used for addition & subtraction facts in the Math Mammoth curriculum . For example, in the online practice program, you could choose to practice fact families with 6. This means you will get addition & subtraction problems like what you see in the picture below -- and also including missing number problems. Check it out!

Here's an enjoyable math video for students and parents/teachers alike. It's about folding and cutting... but it still IS very much about math -- because the lady models the basics of mathematical thinking in a wonderful way as she goes on cutting shapes... 😊

This is a big announcement! I have the pleasure to announce a NEW section on Math Mammoth website that focuses on ONLINE PRACTICE for various math concepts! I am sure that many of you will get lots of use out of this new section. The scripts there have been made by my son; let's just call him Codelover 😃. He's still pretty young, but he loves coding and web development, and has been learning a lot about those topics right and left for a while now (mostly using courses from Udemy). I do have a favor to ask though. He made this section in such a manner that it SHOULD work offline (it's something called "progressive web app"; I don't personally understand these concepts nearly as well as he does so I won't even try to explain it). It seems that sometimes it's necessary to RELOAD the page a few times to make it work offline. He would appreciate it if you can test whether it indeed works offline also, or not, and then leave feedback on the s...

A customer asked me about reviewing addition/subtraction facts from 1st grade. The child is currently in 2nd grade but those facts continue to be a weak point, despite flash cards, daily drills on paper, and online drills in the past. Here's my answer... Check out these videos , which show you how the addition facts are taught in MM grade 1. Subtraction facts don't need memorized separately. If you know that 5 + 4 = 9, from that you also know that 9 - 4 = 5 and 9 - 5 = 4. So, subtraction facts become "missing number" addition problems. For example, 7 - 3 = ? Think: which addition fact is this one: 3 + ___ = 7? You can most likely make worksheets for her based on those videos. Additionally, we offer FREE ONLINE practice for addition facts here , and using the fact families approach here . And if you'd like actual books, check out these: www.mathmammoth.com/addition_1.php www.mathmammoth.com/subtraction_1.php Hope this helps!

A bit of news... The printed versions for the  Math Mammoth Blue series books are now available in FULL COLOR. 😃 They're available through Lulu.com, as before, and printed on-demand. To find these, first locate the books you're interested in the list of Blue series books at MathMammoth.com . Then, for each book, you will find a link to Lulu listed under the cover image of that book. Check out also https://www.lulu.com/ home page for coupon codes; they run promotions often!

Here are neat puzzles to review factors in multiplication, the multiplication tables -- and consequently, the basic division facts -- all in the same "package"! Or, just use them as cool logic puzzles. ☺ They're called Find the Factors puzzles. This page explains how to solve them. On this page you'll find a vast amount of them, as Excel spreadsheets: Like the author says, "T he more multiplication facts you know, the easier these puzzles become. Working on these puzzles can help you learn the multiplication table better. "

Grade 5 Skills Review Workbook is finally ready and available (as a PDF)! This book has been designed to complement the lessons in  Math Mammoth Grade 5 complete curriculum , providing  spiral  review of the concepts in the Grade 5 curriculum. The book is divided into chapters, which correspond to the chapters in  Math Mammoth Grade 5  curriculum. It is meant to be used during the school year, alongside the main curriculum. Spiral reviewing means that  after  a particular concept or skill has been studied in the  main curriculum , it is then reviewed repeatedly over time in several different worksheets of this book.

You can now get 25% off of all of Math Mammoth and Make It Real Learning products sold at Math Mammoth website! Use coupon code J9W2-YHDY-R2S2.  The offer is valid till August 26, 2018. Start browsing here: https://www.mathmammoth.com/books.php

One of my customers just sent this in. Her son made this neat interactive program to practice addition & subtraction facts as they're presented in Math Mammoth grade 2. This means the single-digit addition facts where the sum is more than 10, and the corresponding subtraction facts (e.g. 7 + 8, 6 + 9, 13 - 5, 16 - 7 etc). Check it out!

Math Teachers at Play blog carnival 118 is online at Math Mama Writes. Check it out! What is Math Teachers at Play carnival? It's a "smorgasbord" of ideas related to teaching math. This time you will find topics such as - forgetting what they have learned - thoughts on the card game War - counting with dice - origami workshop - Venn diagram puzzle - and more! Enjoy!