squares and mazes, wahoo!

Oct 12, 2015 by tracy

If you are anything like me, you pin things and then never do anything about them or flat out forget about them. Recipes, learning ideas, and home cutification ideas get pinned and forgotten on a fairly regular basis.

BUT, there is hope! I printed out two of my pins and introduced them to my children last Monday and they were both a huge hit! Then I took them to my Math ALIVE! class on Wednesday and my students gobbled them up and begged me to let them take the games home with them. So, now that I have tested them with nearly 20 children, I can say with absolute confidence that your children will love them as well…at least I am pretty darn sure they will! With the goal of creating more math lovers out in the world, I must share these winners!

The first is a spin-off of the dots/complete-the-squares game with multiplication problems added in. My dear boy did about 400 multiplication problems CHEERFULLY while we played the game. And his speed increased dramatically. The totally awesome Mathified Squares Game can be found here. My math students would have happily played it all hour if I would have let them. Instead, I taught them about Eratosthenes and blew their minds with how he measured the circumference of the earth within 200 miles of the measurement we have today.

We printed out lots of copies, grabbed a pair of dice, a cookie sheet, and two different colored pens, and dove right in. Now that I know my kids love it bunches and bunches, I might laminate them and use wipe-off markers, but I am a bit worried we would accidently erase some of our lines with our wrists as we move across the page. The same woman has several other different versions – addition, subtraction, factors, and more, but I am pretty sure those games need to be paid for. If she has a multiplication sheet for 12 sided dice, I will buy it, if not, I am going to make my own, so we can practice up to 12 x 12. (Fisher just told me he wants me to make one up to 20 x 20!)

The second is a large set of Skip-Counting Mazes. Annesley worked through about twenty of them in one sitting and pulled them back out today to do even more. Fisher discovered an error on one of the counting by 5 mazes, but even that error added to his learning as he triple checked all the numbers and possibilities before declaring with confidence that there was a mistake and the number 245 was missing.

Both of these activities are wonderful for cementing in those basic math skills we all need while not making it seem like the drill-n-kill approaches that so often shut little ones brains down.

We are on a math roll around here lately. Annesley finished her math book last week and started a new one today. She decided she wants to do 11 pages a day! And today she did it! I decided to introduce a new game to them today and it was a huge hit as well. Corners is from the RightStart Card Games Kit and is a fabulous game for working on multiples of 5 and addition. I wasn’t sure if Annes could handle it, but with a little bit of help once her score got into the 200s she did just fine.

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math=life lessons

Apr 21, 2014 by tracy

Our little man has what I lovingly call the “leave me alone and let me build things and find bugs and for heaven’s sake, don’t make me sit still and do workbooks syndrome.” He does love me to read to him and he will sit for hours while I do so. He also sits still whenever he is focused on something of his own choosing. Lately it has been learning to draw bugs, race cars, and space ships.

He is really good at math. His minds gets math. I love watching the wheels turn in his mind as he ponders something and figures it out. But he doesn’t really like doing math. He especially doesn’t like to be cheerful as he does it. I was about to pull out my hair with all his grumpiness and flat out refused to help him whenever he turned into a whiney mess of “I can’t do it, I hate math, why can’t I go outside?” Richard talked to him. I talked to him. But nothing really helped for more than a day at a time. I thought about it. I prayed about it. Then I put a plan into action.

About four weeks ago I made him a deal. I told him if he could cheerfully do math with me and get done with his current math book and the next math book by the end of April, I would buy him the remote control rat he had been dreaming about since last fall. He had me count up all the pages in both books and help him figure out a schedule of four pages a day, three days a week.

But then I went to California with my dad…and then my mom and sister came…and we got behind on his schedule. We had to revamp it to seven pages a day, four days a week. And he cheerfully worked hard and learned a gob of new information and increased his skills and wowed me with how smart his little mind is. Somedays he got through eight pages, sometimes nine, but usually seven tuckered him out.

This morning he woke up and came and snuggled in bed with me and asked “How many more pages do I have in my math book?” I said “I don’t know, let’s count them up.” Well, he had 28 more pages so I said “You are doing great buddy! You are going to make it to your goal, I am so proud of you!”

He thought about it for a few minutes and then asked ever so sweetly, “Mom, can we do all 28 pages today? I want to finish today.”

“Of course! I will help you out and put in the time if you are willing to put in the time.” And so we started.

Nearly five hours later we finished. He was exhausted, but quite pleased with himself. He almost gave up a few times, but he stuck it out and pushed himself to do hard things. When he finished the last page, he gave me a heartfelt look with his big blue eyes and red eyelashes and said “Mom, thank you for helping me.”

He immediately called his papa and told him the good news and asked him to go pick up the rat. We found out a few hours later that the rat was only available at Halloween time and had been gone from the store for months. The poor boy! He was so disappointed. I found one online and offered to get it for him and have it arrive sometime next week, but in the end he decided to get a little lego set he found on clearance at our local variety store with his papa tonight.

I don’t believe in bribing children. I DO believe in helping them learn better skills and behaviors by occasionally creating a plan with them that involves a tangible reward. Fisher didn’t have to do x and then he got y. He had to overcome his desire to complain about his math book for weeks on end, treat me respectfully, learn a lot of really tough stuff, and stick with it day after day. In my mind, that is totally worth $14.

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fiar: humphrey the lost whale

Jan 14, 2014 by tracy

Annes and I started our FIAR adventure again this week. We took December off and just got into the swing of things with FIAR again. I wanted to read All The Places To Love, one of my all-time favorite books, but she chose Humphrey The Lost Whale

This is the endearing, true story of a humpback whale who made a mistake and traveled under the Golden Gate Bridge, into San Francisco Bay, and up the the Sacramento River in 1985. Scientists, the U.S. Coast Guard, and people from all over the world worked together to help Humphrey get back out to the deep waters of the ocean.

Miss Annes thoroughly enjoying this book. The whole time we were reading it she kept asking, “He doesn’t die does he? He makes it back to the ocean, right?” Today we talked about salt water vs. fresh water, the Golden Gate Bridge, blowholes, different types of bridges, whale sounds, and the maps in the book.

Great times with my little one – so grateful I have this time with her.

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book bonanzas: the perfect square

Sep 16, 2013 by tracy

We checked this book out from the library and love it! The Perfect Square is a delightful little book full clever captions, and lovely artwork by Michael Hall. It is about a square who is taken apart in a different way each day of the week. After he is cut up, ripped apart, or shattered, he makes himself into something new. So fun! This week we are going to cut up our own squares and make them into the objects in the book and probably some objects of our own creations as well.

“But on Monday, the square was cut into pieces and poked full of holes. It wasn’t perfectly square anymore.”

On the next page, these pieces are turned into a fountain with all the holes making the bubbles. So, so darling. One day the pieces make a river, another a bridge, another a mountain. It is brilliant and has got the wheels turning in my two little ones minds. I can’t wait to see what they create!

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here come the bugs

Mar 16, 2013 by tracy

I have two avid bug collectors in my home. They crack me up.

Here are some comments from today.

Annesley: Oh MY goodness! Signs of bugs! (I totally thought she was going to say “signs of spring,” but I was wrong.

Me: Hmmm, what do you have? (Seeing a whole pile of bugs in her hand right above my head.)

Annesley: Look, mom! Look! I have found bugs! Look at my worms and my big, fat slug! Ahhh, I am SO happy it is bug time again!

Me: Yes, that is exciting.

Then she put her cheek next to the bugs and sighs the way you would over a new baby.

She runs back outside to find more bugs…thirty minutes later she and Fisher are back with more bugs to show me.

Fisher: We are the only ones that love bugs. We are the only ones who find bugs. The rest of our family don’t really like bugs. Look at our giant pile of worms!

Annesley: Mom! Do you see our bugs? I am so excited to find bugs. I love my little wormies. Do you want to see my big, fat slug? Here it is! Look!

It seems the days of having my little ones inside with me for the winter are about to be over. We are back to exploring nature, digging in the dirt, playing in the mud, and housing hundreds of bugs in jars all over the house.

Welcome spring.

p.s. If you or your children like watching nature films, this one is really good. Annesley can’t stop talking about it after she watched it in her Where The Wild Things Are class at iFamily on Wednesday.

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math alive!

Feb 11, 2013 by tracy

I decided to teach a semester of everyone’s favorite math class, Math Alive!, because there are quite a few children that weren’t able to take it when I taught it in 2010 – 2011 and they will be too old to take it when I teach it for Fisher in 2014 – 2015. I hemmed and hawed because it is a GOB of work, but finally I decided I had to do it so Jacob and Rachel and the other twelve year olds who missed out the first time would be able to have the chance to discover math in a whole new way.

We have met two times so far and I am in love with these kids! The first week we talked about what math is, introduced them to my super-fun Challenges of The Week, and read The King’s Chessboard which is all about the risks one takes when one doesn’t understand math.

At the beginning of each class we have a ten minute math activity where we build things, solve puzzles, play math games, or create something…a get-your-brain-on-fire activity. The first week I took my magic blocks and the kids had a blast. The second week we made designs on Geoboards. At the 9 1/2 minute mark, the race begins and all the students work as fast as they can to put their supplies away and get ready to learn about our mathematician of the day.

Here are the awesome blocks.

 

Last week we learned about Thales and built pyramids out of golf balls. It is always a huge hit and super challenging to solve the puzzles. Drat it all, I forgot my camera! This week we will continue to learn about Thales and will figure out how he measured the Egyptian pyramids.

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the legos

Nov 6, 2012 by tracy

Fisher: Do you want to know how it all began?

Me: YES! (Having no idea what he was going to explain to me…perhaps the origin of the species?)

Fisher: Wellllll, I started with my first idea. It didn’t work at all. There were a lot of problems with that idea.

Me: Oooohhh. (Figuring out that he is telling me about his newest lego airplane).

Fisher: Then I tried my second idea. It worked a little bit, but not that good.

Me: Oohhhhhh.

Fisher: So, then I tried my last idea and it worked pretty well. So, now I have an airplane. I guess that is good. Don’t you think we need to FaceTime Grandma so she can see how my idea worked out?

This little guy cracks me up. He thinks and thinks and thinks. He isn’t quick on the draw – he likes to twirl things around in his mind for a good long while before he speaks. Most people aren’t willing to wait around to hear what he has to say, but trust me, if you do, it is worth the wait. He will either amaze you with his depth or crack you up with his innocent ponderings.

Fisher LOVES legos. I never wanted a lego house and refused to buy any of them. First of all, they make a mess. Second of all, they hurt terribly when I step on them in the middle of the night. Thirdly, they are expensive. Jessica always told me how much her boys loved legos and tried to get me on the lego bandwagon, but I resolutely stayed far away from the little plastic pain inducers.

But now we have a lego house. One Christmas a few years ago, some wonderful Christmas angel gave Fisher an awesome set of legos. He played with that set everyday for the next many months. He went through the instruction guide step by step and slowly figured out how to follow the directions. He spent about a month on the first guide. After that he got much faster. Now he whips out creations left and right. He builds while I read to him, he builds during family read-aloud time. He builds while he listens to the scriptures on his CD player. He builds and builds and builds. The next Christmas he was given more legos from another Christmas angel (or maybe the same one – we have no idea who loves us so much to do this for us, but we pray for them to be blessed one hundred fold for their generosity to us!) and he started saving up all his pennies to buy little sets here and there. Now he has about five sets and is constantly thinking and creating more buildings and vehicles.

Thank you to the lego giver who started this great journey of learning for my little guy. Our home has been so blessed by the thinking and creating these ingenious blocks have brought into our lives.

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cards + math = learning

Jul 26, 2012 by tracy

I am a huge fan of learning games. My house is full of them and my children love to play them. We have long loved the Math Card Games Kit from RightStart Math and I think every family, homeschooling or not, should buy it and play the games.

Today I learned about a free e-book, Acing Math:One Deck At A Time and it looks fabulous. I downloaded it and am going to buy Fisher and Annesley their own card decks for our upcoming camping trip. Then on rainy afternoons, we can pull out our instructions, and cards and familiarize ourselves with a hundred new games!

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go to the dump

Sep 13, 2011 by tracy

I cannot rave loudly enough about the RightStart Game Pack. Can you hear me shouting?

EVERY SINGLE HOME NEEDS THIS SET OF GAMES!!!

Okay, back to my normal voice now. We have owned it for many years and I consider it indispensable. It is probably the best $50 I have ever spent. I love these games and more importantly, my children love these games. Jessica over at Balancing Everything recently did a whole write-up about the RightStart materials. I don’t have time to write about everything right now, but I did want to share our love affair with one game.

Today I introduced Fisher to Go To The Dump. I loved seeing his eyes light up as he figured out the numbers in his head. Go To The Dump is just like Go Fish, except a pair is any two cards that add up to ten. So if you have a 4, you ask for a 6. If the other person doesn’t have it, they say “go to the dump” and you draw from the pile in the middle of the players.

5 + 5
6 + 4
7 + 3
8 + 2
9 + 1

We played one round and he begged for more, but then it was time for lunch. It is time for Annesley to learn how to play it as well so the two of them can play with each other without me.

Other favorites are Corners, Skip-Count Memory, Difference War, and Multiplication War. I need to spend more time playing these games with my children because inevitably once we start we spend several hours exploring mathematical concepts and everyone get oodles of practice with their math facts.

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catapult contest

Apr 28, 2011 by tracy

This semester in Math Alive! we studied Archimedes’ life, inventions, and discoveries. We built Archimedean screws, pulleys, levers of all types, discovered pi by circumscribing a circle, figured out how many popcorn kernels it would take to fill our classroom, learned about the library in Alexandria, constellations, food and customs of his time period, exponents and super-duper large numbers, built mobiles for real and figured out pretend mobiles with numbers, learned about square, triangular, and rectangular numbers, learned about different types of calendars and invented our own calendars, and fell in love with all things mathematical.

Our closing event was a catapult contest. Each child was challenged to build a catapult that could fire a tennis ball and then to bring it to the field outside our building for a shoot-off. I was amazed at the wide variety of styles, sizes, and abilities of the different contraptions. We ended up giving prizes for things like farthest shooting, highest, most accurate, stretchiest, most original design, quickest on the battlefield, a true blue trebuchet, perfectly precise, superbly symmetrical, snappiest trigger, and most horizontal firing position.

Here are some pictures of our fun:

Love the pink and purple!

Such fun! I think we should have one of these every year…and another version for just the dads to compete in!

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hue knew? and cross-eyed

Apr 21, 2011 by tracy

I found two new math games at DI the other day…gotta love thrift store finds that actually have all the playing pieces! We have played them at Math Alive! the last two weeks and they have been a huge hit, so now I will share them with y’all.

Hue Knew? is a great thinking game. It consists of 10 colored pegs and a gazillion cards that have each color name written in different colors. Two of the color names are written in the same color as its name and whomever grabs those pegs first scores a point. If you grab an incorrect point, you lose a point. On four of the cards, all the color names are correctly written in their same colors. On those cards, you must grab the black peg and if you do so first, you get two points. My students have loved playing this game and it was a hit here at home as well. Its amazing to me how my brain can play tricks on me and make me think I am reading the word brown in brown when it is really written in pink.

Cross-eyed is a fast (each game takes about 5 minutes), competitive, super-fun game. There is a stack of cards with a different pattern on each card and then each player has a stack of smaller cards that match the bigger cards. All the players race through their cards at the same time to see who can find a match to the big card first. As soon as that one is matched, you start on the one below it. At first, I couldn’t see that patterns at all, I just went cross-eyed, but after a few rounds I am much better at it and so are my students.

Both of these games are made by Mindware and while you might not find them at your local thrift store, I’m sure you can find them online.

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make ‘n’ break

Mar 30, 2011 by tracy

Tonight I pulled out a game to play (all I really wanted to do was go to bed, but I decided to focus on the question “how does it feel?” and decided my children needed some feel-good attention from their mama and papa tonight) and we had so much fun. We have had this game for years, but it hasn’t gotten much use lately. My Math Alive! boys love it and I thought maybe it was time for my own children to play with it as well.

What a hit!

The game has cards with pictures on it and ten solid wood blocks to make into the picture on the card. You race against the timer and get points for how many pictures you complete each turn. Ravensburger products are some of our favorite because they always have high-quality pieces built to withstand the test of time.

Fisher, Annes, and Kez (Blythe was gone to her Financial Peace class) all loved it. We had a wonderful hour playing together and it was exactly what we needed to reconnect after the last week of crazy schedules, mama being gone a lot, sewing a lot, and everyone being kind of grouchy to one another. Keziah was super fabulous at putting towers up speedily and to my great surprise, Fisher was really good at constructing the different diagrams. His building skills have skyrocketed since Christmas when he was given his first Lego set by our amazing Secret Santa. Annes was as enthusiastic as ever and wanted to have a turn every thirty seconds or so.

All the kids begged to play tomorrow during school time, so I will pull it out again in the morning. It is a great spatial math game and also develops dexterity and sequencing skills. Can’t wait!

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pulleys, levers, and screws, oh my!

Mar 17, 2011 by tracy

A few weeks back we made pulleys and all three types of levers in our Math Alive! class. The children loved it! They were each able to pick each other up in the pulley and to test out the levers to see if the fulcrum’s actually made their loads easier to lift or not. Here are some pics:

Hands-on math is super fun…we should all do it more often!

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the famous blocks

Jan 18, 2011 by tracy

The deal-of-a-lifetime blocks were a huge hit at math class last week. The children LOVED them. We had scorpions, corrals, ships, snakes, cars, and a tower built by standing on a chair that was ON TOP of a table. Super fun stuff! Find yourself some Kapla, Keva, or Citi-Blocs and find yourself amazed at the creativity that emerges! These blocks are built in a 1:3:5 ratio and are perfect for discovering balance, geometry, weight, and strength principles.

Because of the before mentioned deal-of-a-lifetime we have 3000 blocks. I would say any family would want around 1000 blocks. We got ours for over 90% off, but even without the deal-of-a-lifetime price, I would highly recommend them. My children have loved playing with them at science museums and children’s discovery centers for years. We have longed to have them in our home, but could never justify the cost until the price of the century hit me in the head ($6.97 for 300 blocks vs. $99 for 300! Gotta love clearance sales at stores that have no idea what they are doing! I wish I would have been able to buy hundreds of boxes and sold them to all my friends!). Now that we have them, I wish I would have splurged on them years ago. I see my children and my students learning about construction in a very tangible way that is in some ways more forgiving and in some ways less forgiving than other construction sets. I see the wheels in their brains turning as they figure out what the possibilities are. I see the smiles on their faces and know that much more than a fun time is being had. I know they are in full immersion learning and I am beyond thrilled!

Here are some pics from math class and then some more from today when we got them out to play with some friends who came to visit and couldn’t wait to try them out.

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book bonanza – the king’s chessboard

Sep 4, 2010 by tracy

We read The King’s Chessboard at my Math Alive! class this week. The children all loved it and I hope it taught them the power of knowing math, the foolishness of pride, and the immensity of the doubling principle.

This book tells the story of a proud and foolish king who wants to reward one of his subjects. The man does not want to be rewarded, but the king insists. The man then allows the king to give him one grain of rice on the first day, two grains of rice the second day, four grains the third day, eight grains the fourth day, sixteen the fifth day, and so on, for the course of 64 days. One day for every square on a chessboard. Well, if you do the math, you end up with a VERY large number by the 64th day. Go ahead…figure it out and post back here with your answer! Bonus points for anyone who also figures out the total amount of grains of rice that would be given over the full 64 days.

My children love this book and now my math students love it as well. Check it out at your library or buy it for your own home library and I guarantee you will love it! Make sure you add in a proud and loud voice for the king and you are assured read-aloud success!

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g is for googol

Nov 18, 2009 by tracy

I found another math book I love and have to share it with you! G is For Googol by David Schwartz is an alphabet book with each letter standing for a mathematical concept. The concepts are all explained thoroughly and hilariously. It is sure to draw in math lovers and math haters. Blythe started it last night and was giggling on every page.

An example of its humor:

“I am sure you are wondering how to write 2 billion with exponents. If you aren’t wondering, start wondering now!”

We are going to have a delightful time going through this book together and separately.

Enjoy!

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read any math lately?

Oct 24, 2009 by tracy

I have a rather large collection of books that teach math principles as part of the story. I thought everyone did. I thought everyone would know about these books and have an obsession with collecting them and strewing them throughout their homes so that children grow up reading books that teach mathematical concepts and it is just part of their daily life.

I was wrong. Time after time I have had people tell me they have never heard of these types of books. Well, I am here to spread the message far and wide and to share with you our favorites!

I don’t want you to think I am saying working out problems is bad. It is great and we love the Right Start and Miquon Math Programs. However, it is NOT sufficient. I am living proof that a person can get all the answers right and have no clue what it means. I was always in the highest math classes. I took Trig and AP Calculus. I had no clue what I was doing, but I could follow the formula and churn out the right answer and get an A on the test. I want my children to understand numbers and their relationships with each other. I want them to see math in everything. I want them to think like a mathematician. One of my approaches to doing this is to read math with them. To read about inventors and thinkers and creative people throughout time. I want them to know there is a long history of people wondering about numbers and working hard to come up with answers. I want them to have examples to look to if they decide to be a mathematician. I want them to see patterns and possibilities in all the world around them. These books are my early attempts to do just that.

We have not moved up to the next level of books yet, but we are getting there and when we do, I will have a whole ‘nother post on books that are great for incorporating algebra, trig, physics, and calculus in them.

First of all, there are two websites that will change your life and the way you look at math.

livingmath.net

letsplaymath.wordpress.com

They are both fabulous resources for changing your math paradigm and for finding out about wonderful books and ideas to teach math. I have learned about a lot of these books at Living Math or on the yahoo list sponsored by Living Math.

So, here are our favorite books, in no particular order, just off the top of my head as I sit here typing. Some of these are overtly teach math principles, some of them are teaching patterns, time, histories, inventions as a sidelight to the story. Some of them are MUST-HAVES in my mind, some of them are great to check-out from the library. All of them have been beneficial.

Books We Own and Have Enjoyed (okay, I guess I am going to include a few that we don’t own and have checked out from the library)

Spaghetti and Meatballs for All by Marilyn Burns (anything by Marilyn Burns is fabulous! She is the guru of learning and teaching math in creative ways.)

Amanda Bean’s Amazing Dream by Cindy Neuschwander

Sea Squares by Joy Hulme

Sir Cumference series by Cindy Neuschwander

My Full Moon is Square by Elinor J. Pinczes

Inchworm and a Half by Elinor J. Pinczes

Anno’s Mysterious Multiplying Jar by Masaichiro & Mitsumasa Anno

Anno’s Math Games by Masaichiro & Mitsumasa Anno

Anno’s Magic Seeds by Masaichiro & Mitsumasa Anno

Anno’s Hat Tricks by Masaichiro & Mitsumasa Anno

The Warlord’s Puzzle by Virginia Walton Pilegard

The Warlord’s Alarm by Virginia Walton Pilegard

The Warlord’s Messengers by Virginia Walton Pilegard

The Warlord’s Beads by Virginia Walton Pilegard

The Warlord’s Fish by Virginia Walton Pilegard

The Warlord’s Kites by Virginia Walton Pilegard

The Warlord’s Puppeteers by Virginia Walton Pilegard

Mathematicians are People, Too: Stories from the Lives of Great
Mathematicians by Luetta Reimer & Wilbert Reimer (both volumes are fabulous!)

Arctic Fives Arrive by Elinor J. Pinczes

One Hundred Hungry Ants by Elinor J. Pinczes

A Remainder of One by Elinor J. Pinczes

Senefer: A Young Genius in Old Egypt by Beatrice Lumpkin

The King’s Commissioners by Aileen Friedman

Ten Sly Piranhas by William Wise

The King’s Chessboard by David Birch

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

The I Hate Mathematics! Book by Marilyn Burns (currently Blythe’s favorite)

Actual Size by Steve Jenkins

Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest by Steve Jenkins

Biggest, Strongest, Fastest by Steve Jenkins

Roman Numerals I to MM by Arthur Geisart

What’s Faster Than a Speeding Cheetah? by Robert E. Wells

What’s Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew? by Robert E. Wells

How Do You Lift a Lion? by Robert E. Wells

Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is? by Robert Wells

What’s Older Than A Giant Tortoise? by Robert E. Wells

How Do You Know What Time It Is? by Robert E. Wells

How Tall, How Short, How Faraway by David Adler

Math for Smarty Pants by Marilyn Burns

Multiplying Menace: The Revenge Of Rumpelstiltskin by Pam Calvert

Murderous Maths by Kjartan Poskitt

How Much Is A Million? by David A. Schwartz

One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale by Demi

The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns

The Quiltmaker’s Gift by Jeff Brumbeau

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott

The Librarian Who Measured the Earth (story of Erastothenes) by Kathryn Lasky

String, Straightedge and Shadow: The Story of Geometry by Julia E. Diggins

The Go-Around Dollar by Barbara Johnston Adams

Tight Times by Barbara Shook Hazen

Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? A Fast, Clear, and Fun
Explanation of the Economics by Richard J. Maybury (an Uncle Eric book)

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics by Norton Juster

Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin by Lloyd Moss

Can You Count Ten Toes? by Denis Roche

From Zero to Ten: The Story of Numbers by Vivian French

Mummy Math: An Adventure in Geometry by Cindy Neuschwander

What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras? A Math Adventure by Julie Ellis

Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick

Along Came Galileo by Jeanne Bendik

Mathematics Illustrated Dictionary: Facts, Figures and People by Jeanne Bendick

Telling the Time by Heather Amery & Stephen Cartwright

Radio Boy by Sharon Phillips Denslow

Julia Morgan Built a Castle by Celeste Davidson Mannis

Too Many Cooks by Andrea Buckless

Striking it Rich: The Story of the California Gold Rush by Stephen Krensky

What’s Up With That Cup? by Sheila Keenan

The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis

Pizza Counting by Christina Dobson

Marvelous Math: A Book of Poems by Lee Bennett Hopkins

Splitting the Herd: A Corral of Odds and Evens by Trudy Harris

The Great Bridge-Building Contest by Bo Zaunders

How High is the Sky? by Anna Milbourne

How Big Is A Million? by Anna Milbourne

How Deep Is The Sea by Anna Milbourne

My Place by Nadia Wheatley

Starry Messenger by Peter Sis

A Million Dots by Andrew Clements

You Can Count On Monsters by Richard Evan Schwartz – oh my heavens, this one is so brilliant!

The Joy of Mathematics by Theoni Pappas

Great Books for Older Children and Adults

A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe: Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art, and Science by Michael Schneider

The Wisdom in the Hebrew Alphabet by Michael L. Munk

I know I have more…this is just what I pulled off our shelves this week…so I may need to add more books to this post later.

These are books we haven’t read, but I think sound fabulous and I want to get them.

The Number Devil by Enzensberger, Multi-concepts, cute illustrations. Fun classic, very wide appeal, can be read aloud to even very young kids

The Story of 1 by Terry Jones and PBS Home Video – One hour well presented video on the history of the number 1.

Better Than a Lemonade Stand: Small Business Ideas for Kids by Daryl Bernstein

The Man Who Counted: A Collection of Mathematical Adventures, by Malba Tahan, Chapter book, loosely based on the story of Khayyam

The Ten Things All Future Mathematicians and Scientists Must Know But Are Rarely Taught by Edward Zaccaro

The Book of Think by Marilyn Burns

The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat by Theoni Pappas

Hopefully this will get you started on your own math journey! If you have any questions about specific books, I will do my best to answer them.

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