Homeschool Math Blog

Math Mammoth Statistics & Probability is now available -- and it's the last book I'm intending for the Math Mammoth Blue Series . So the Blue Series is now complete! Price: $5.30 (download), $10.30 (printed) This book starts with the easiest topics, such as reading different graphs . These lessons are meant for 5th grade. Some are useful even in earlier grades. Then we study histograms and various kinds of line graphs , including how to draw them. The next section deals with mean, median, and mode —the three measures of central tendency—how to use them, and how these concepts relate to line and bar graphs. To create circle graphs , the student needs to calculate percentages, and it is assumed here that the student has already mastered how to calculate those. The lesson on data analysis presents various types of graphs for students to read, and reviews some other percent-related topics. Then students learn how to make stem-and-leaf plots . Stem-and-leaf plots ...

Math Mammoth Integers worktext covers all important integer (signed numbers) topics for middle school (grades 5-8), with instructions written directly to the student. Thus, it requires very little teacher or parent involvement. Check out a few free sample worksheets or lessons: http://www.mathmammoth.com/preview/Integers_Adding_Integers1_Counters.pdf http://www.mathmammoth.com/preview/Integers_Dividing_Integers.pdf And see the contents . More information and purchase info is here .

I have just finished writing the material for Math Mammoth Geometry 2 book. The material in it is suitable for grades 6-7. Download price is $5.80. The main topics in the book include: * angle relationships * classifying triangles and quadrilaterals * angle sum of triangles and quadrilaterals * congruent transformations, including some in the coordinate grid * similar figures, including using ratios and proportions * review of the area of all common polygons * circumference of a circle (Pi) * area of a circle * conversions between units of area (both metric and customary) * volume and surface area of common solids * conversions between units of volume (both metric and customary) * some common compass-and-ruler constructions. I've included several complete lessons from the book as samples (PDF). Feel free to download these and use with your students! Angles in Polygons Review: Area of Polygons, 1 Surface Area Besides those, there are two other sample pages: ...

I have just posted a comprehensive review of this book that is popular among homeschoolers for a high school geometry course. Click to read: Review of Harold Jacobs Geometry book

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...

Math Mammoth Percent book is here! Part of the "Math Mammoth Blue Series", this is a topical worktext, which contains both the instruction and the exercises in the same book. Download price: $3.50. I know that the concept of percent and related applications are often difficult for students. I wrote this text keeping this in mind, and I hope it can clear the confusion on percentages, percent of change, and such topics! From the description: Math Mammoth Percent teaches students the concept of percent, percentage of a number, discounts, sales tax, percent of change, circle graphs, and percent of comparison. It is suitable for 6th-8th grade (middle school). The concept of percent builds on a student's understanding of fractions and decimals. Specifically, students should already be very familiar with the idea of finding a fractional part of a whole (such as finding 3/4 of $240). Students who have used Math Mammoth have been practicing that concept since 4th grade, and ...

I have two new books available for the Math Mammoth Blue Series: 1) British Money Math Mammoth British Money is a worktext that covers money-related topics usually encountered during years 2-4. The book contains both textbook explanations and exercises, and is designed to be very easy to teach from, requiring very little teacher preparation (you do need to find practise coins before the lessons). Please read more, and see free sample pages. 2) Fractions & Decimals 3 Math Mammoth Fractions & Decimals 3 continues the study of fraction and decimal topics, on the 6th grade level . This book assumes the student already has studied fractions and decimals in the past, for example using Math Mammoth Fractions 2 and Math Mammoth Decimals 2. The goal of the book is to go through all of the fraction and decimal arithmetic , using up to six decimal digits and larger denominators in fractions than what is commonly encountered in 4th and 5th grade materials. Read more, and see free sample...

There are now three new books available in the Blue Series. They are all for grades 5-6. The material for these books came from the Light Blue 5th and 6th grade curricula. Please click on the links to learn more and see samples. Math Mammoth The Four Operations (with a Touch of Algebra) The main topics studied in this book are simple equations, expressions that involve a variable, the order of operations, long multiplication, long division, and graphing simple linear functions. The idea is not to practice each of the four operations separately, but rather to see how they are used together in solving problems and in simple equations. We are trying to develop student's algebraic thinking. Many of the ideas in this chapter are preparing them for algebra in advance. Math Mammoth Ratios & Proportions & Problem Solving This worktext concentrates, first of all, on two important concepts: ratios and proportions, and then on problem solving. First, we study thoroughly the concept of...

I just stumbled upon the book Math on Call: A Mathematics Handbook : Based on the reviews and from the "Look Inside" feature at Amazon it looks like a GREAT math reference book . I've been on the lookout for something like this, because I get emails from adults who want to review or refresh their basic math before going to college or some other course they're taking. So now I have something to refer them to. The table of contents includes these chapters: NUMERATION The Base Ten System Rational Numbers Irrational Numbers NUMBER THEORY Factors and Multiples Powers and Roots COMPUTATION Addition Subtraction Multiplication Division ALGEBRA Algebraic Notation Properties Relations and Functions Equations Inequalities GRAPHS AND STATISTICS Gathering Data Organizing and Summarizing Data with Statistics Displaying Data in Tables and Graphs Interpreting Data GEOMETRY Elements of Geometric Figures Angles Plane Figures Solid Figures RATIO, PROPORTION, AND PER...

This review has been moved here .

When I was a kid, my mom sometimes bought my brother and me activity books to fill up our summer time. Well, if you're into activity books, here's a Sticker Math Fun by Usborne that I can recommend for summer math learning and practice (grades K-2) (or for later in the school year as well, for that matter) . It has different mathematically-sound activities for addition, subtraction, beginning multiplication, fractions and clock, mostly on about 1st grade level but some for kindergarten and some for 2nd. It is filled with quite variable and creative activities, and not just dull simple adding and subtracting. The activities include missing addends or subtrahends, number patterns, finding numbers that add up to a certain number, and so on. It is in full color with kid-friendly imagery. We bought this book several months ago, and I can say my kindergartner-1st grader has really enjoyed the book! And the third grader has wanted to do several pages as well. The normal price is ...

I have recently had the pleasure to add Make It Real Learning workbooks to my site. These books contain real-life math activities with real-life data, companies, and situations. They are written by Frank Wilson. Arithmetic I Fractions, Percents, and Decimals I Linear Functions I Calculus I Periodic and Piecewise Functions I Some examples of the topics included in these activities are: cell phone plans, autism, population growth, cooking, borrowing money, credit cards, life spans, population growth, and music downloads. But there are many more, more than I can list here. As students work through the problems, they can use the math skills and concepts they have learned in their math curriculum (such as the concept of average or graphing), and apply those to a situation from real life. Each activity-lesson in the book contains several questions about the situation, starting with basics and going into more in-depth evaluations, and should be adequate for one-two complete class periods. W...

I wanted to pass on this book link to those of you who are interested in the pedagogy of mathematics: Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics (2001) by Center for Education ( CFE ) A big plus is that you can read the whole book online for free. This book talks a lot about how the conceptual understanding of basic arithmetic develops in children during grades 1-8. It explains common misconceptions. The book cites a lot of research about how children learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and proportions. It doesn't deal with geometry or measuring, because the authors decided to concentrate on "number" concepts. All in all I think it's good basic reading for all of us who teach math. You can read it online by chapters. Here's a direct link to page 187 which starts dealing with single-digit addition . Here's a table comparing various addition and subtraction problem types . And here's a link to the discussion about sin...

I know there already exist books that teach problem solving and contain lots of word problems. Well, there is a new one on the block, now: Solving Math Problems by John R. Dixon . It contains math problems with extremely detailed solutions for middle school, high school, and (some) for college level. He's made available a superb collection of samples from his book. Each sample has three completely solved problems. There's a sample file for pattern recognition problems , counting problems , word problems , optimization problems , and fun or "recreation" problems . Even if you're not planning to buy any math books, I encourage you to check his samples and read them through, just for your own learning (and of your students). It isn't often that one finds such detailed expositions on how to solve word problems. I'm a firm believer in the "apprentice" principle, when it comes to learning problem solving. In other words, one of the best ways to learn ...

I have a new book to add to the Blue Series collection of worktexts: Math Mammoth Add & Subtract 4 Math Mammoth Add & Subtract 4 covers the following addition and subtraction related topics which are approximately for the third and fourth grade level: * mental addition and subtraction strategies; * adding and subtracting in columns; * Roman numerals; * the connection between addition and subtraction, missing addend problems, and solving word problems with bar diagrams; * order of operations; * bar graphs, line graphs, and money problems. Price: $5.00 Buy now Samples pages include: Contents and Introduction Addition Review Adding Terminology and Practice More Subtraction Review Subtract in Columns Word Problems and Bar Diagrams Rounding Line Graphs

I've had some fun building this page about math readers , or "living math" books for my main site. The list is not terribly long yet, but it will grow, I'm sure. I discovered that Amazon has all kinds of new "widgets" available to promote their products. What do you think of this? It is a slideshow featuring MathStart readers by Stuart J. Murphy. Hover your mouse over it: Amazon.com Widgets Math story books offer children an interesting way to learn math concepts, to get interested in mathematics, and to explore some fascinating topics outside of the main curriculum. It is one way to bring math to "life". Kids are almost sure to enjoy it. On my page , I list for example Cryptoclub, a fascinating storybook that teaches how to encrypt and decrypt secrete messages, or The Adventures of Penrose - THE MATHEMATICAL CAT, in which you will encounter many fascinating mathematical topics from fractals to tessellations, or many books for little kids. I wa...

Kinetic Books Algebra 1 looks really interesting! It is not really just a book, but software, or a digital interactive textbook. It contains text, interactive problems and activities, and a scoring system all on the computer. Students can get step-by-step assistance in the form of audio hints and one-click access to relevant examples. See a demo here . But the best is that the company Kinetic Books is even offering a free download of the product till September 30! That really sounds fantastic, so if you have algebra 1 student(s), don't fail to take advantage of this tremendous offer.

Finally the time has come, and I can announce that there are THREE new books for my Math Mammoth Blue Series: Math Mammoth Clock - about telling time, for grades 1-3. Price: $3.50. Math Mammoth Money - counting coins, making change, simple money problems. For grades 1-3. Price: $3. Math Mammoth Measuring - getting familiar with common measuring units for length, weight, and volume. Includes lots of hands-on problems. Mostly for grades 2 and 3. Price: $4. As usual you can find some sample pages, table of contents, and more info on each book's web page. The Blue Series and the All Inclusive packages have been updated, accordingly.

After some delay the Statistics Worksheets Collcetion from the Math Mammoth Green Series is now available. It is priced at $4 for 47 worksheets. The sheets span about five grade levels (from grade 3 to 7); however the majority are for grades 5-7. In this collection, the worksheets are organized by topic (see table of contents ). Within each topic, the difficulty level varies because the sheets have originally been made for different grade levels. Thus the teacher can choose a sheet of right difficulty level, or even assign some students easier sheets and some students more challenging ones, on the same topic. Math Mammoth Statistics Worksheets Collection covers bar graphs, line graphs, circle graphs - both reading and drawing them - data analysis, mean, median, and mode, box-and-whisker plots, stem-and-leaf plots, measures of variation, misleading statistics, data gathering, and a few statistics projects. I hope the problems will fit your needs!

I just recieved an email from a publishing company. They want to send me a few books to review and then list on my site. I've written reviews before, a whole bunch . I started my "reviewer career"... well, in school of course. We wrote book reviews, as I'm sure you did too. I don't think mine were that special. But somehow the role of reviewer has fallen to my lap nowadays. For example, recently I just finished the review of YourTeacher and MathScore . The new books that this email was about are Crimes and Mathdemeanors A collection of short detective stories for young adults who are interested in applying high school level mathematics and physics to solve mysteries. The Cryptoclub: Using Mathematics to Make and Break Secret Codes. Join the Cryptokids as they apply basic mathematics to make and break secret codes. This book has many hands-on activities that have been tested in both classrooms and informal settings. I haven't seen these yet. The reason I put t...