Homeschool Math Blog

We have great carnival this time: Math Teachers at Play #24 . Check it out! Some of my picks are an easy card game for practicing addition/subtraction , some fun worksheets for addition and subtraction , and consideration about how many balloons you'd need to lift up a house (think the movie Up) I also really liked the idea of giving students the answer, and asking them to explain why and how it is gotten, as is explained in Why is this answer right? But there are many more and Denise has worked hard to create this beautiful carnival so check it out!

The most current edition is posted at MathRecreation . It's very interesting, with lots of variety, head on over!

When you get time... perhaps over the holidays, go over to the most recent Math Teachers at Play carnival at Math Mama Writes, and enjoy the variety of blogposts revolving around math. I especially liked the estimation lesson , and the start of the proof that Pi is irrational . The proof looks familiar so am sure I've seen it in university sometime or another, but of course I don't exactly remember it on my own! Yet, I like being reminded of it, because Pi is a topic in middle school math, and I feel I'm a better teacher if I have at least a mental recognition that I've seen and understood the proof that it's irrational, even if I cannot exactly present the proof to the students. And then I also thought these dynamic applets to make nets for pyramids and other solids were neat.

Math Teachers At Play #17 carnival is posted at Math Recreation. LOTS of stuff there this time! Here are some of my picks: Circle of fifths and roots of two is of interest if you have studied music. This post explains the difference between equal temperament and Pythagorean tuning, from a mathematical point of view. All about A4 explores this common paper size and its special properties. And Pat's post You Might Be a Mathematician IF... was quite funny.

Welcome to another edition of "Math Teachers At Play"! It is again a very engaging and interesting assortment of posts, so feel free to stay a while and relax. Thank you for everyone who submitted! We'll start out in the early years of kindergarten . What happens when a research mathematician goes into a kindergarten class? Something interesting, creative ... and best of all, kids love it. Go check Sequences and Creative Math for Kindergartners . Next in line, kids in the elementary school (grades 1-4) spend a lot of time with math facts. Consider the fun Joey-Joey math game to help them practice! We advance to 5th grade. With "Math Buddy" you can explore Fractions as part of life . "Discrete Ideas" presents The Shortest Path - or mental math multiplication shortcuts for all of us. As a tie-in, I provide a PROOF for one of those shortcuts , which could be used as an exercise in algebra class. Next, we advance to middle school . Quadrilateral Prope...

Welcome to the tenth edition of Math Teachers At Play blog carnival! Here with the heat of the summer, "less is more". We concentrate on teaching issues, but also get to "play" a bit with binary numbers, geometry, integers, and an optical illusion. TEACHING What's a math teacher going to do with Wolfram | Alpha ? In case you haven't heard... Wolfram|Alpha is a new, computational search engine. And if you're a math teacher, you should be aware of it. Collection of Web Freebies discusses Wolfram|Alpha as your Personal Free Online Math Assistant . I wrote an introduction to Wolfram|Alpha as well. I feel it can both be a benefit and a drawback to math education - a benefit because it can free us from routine calculations, and a drawback because students still need to learn to do those, but how can you easily enforce that? W|A presents a dilemma to math teachers... because it can solve SO MUCH. It can solve just about any routine type calculation in alg...

Go visit Math Teachers at Play carnival at Let's Play Math. Lots of neat stuff this time! I definitely want to try this with my daughter for multiplying by 7s. I also really liked Four things I used to think about calculus, and what I’ve replaced them with - a teacher whose teaching has evolved towards conceptual understanding.

Check out the latest edition of Math Teachers at Play blog carnival . It's up at Homeschool Bytes. As a carnival pick, I enjoyed Plat Diviseur (Fractions on a plate) post. It's about a dining plate... Go see!

As I seem to be lacking creative ideas for blogposts on my own blog (though I'm working on two new videos), I suggest you head to Math Teachers at Play blog carnival. Lots of good stuff there! For example, MathNotations is holding a second (free) math contest , and I found some neat Russian-style "subtraction" problems . As always, Denise has illustrated the carnival beautifully.

Denise has just posted the inaugural edition of a new blog carnival: Math Teachers at Play . According to her, it is a " collection of tips, tidbits, games, and activities for students and teachers of preK-12 mathematics ." She said she wanted to start this kind of carnival because of not finding any blog carnival that would exactly fit what she wanted: a collection of blogposts concentrating on preK-12 math and also specifically on math teaching. I definitely can second that feeling, being in the math education field and loving even the "lowly" K-6 math. I found several nice posts in the carnival, go check it out!

There's lots to read and enjoy at the newest carnival of homeschooling . I enjoyed the old schoolhouse photos as well! I know my dad attended a fairly small village school; maybe it was similar to these schoolhouses. One math-related pick from the carnival: Griddlers make great “paint by number” puzzles for kids of all ages - Sol from Wild About Math shares some great number puzzles where you color in a picture based on number clues.

You might not have heard about it, but there exists a blog carnival for math, too. I submitted my rainbow entry into the latest one. Not all of the entries there are higher math, by the way, such as MathMom's Calculator rant or Puzzler puzzled from JD2718. If interested, go check it out: Carnival of math, edition 17 !