This morning the boys and I read an intriguing book, The Token Gift (Canada) (US). It tells the fictional story of an old man from India, Rajrishi Mohan, discontent with what he has accomplished in life. If only he had been king, then he would have amounted to something! His wife reminds him to think [...]
The boys and I have been reading several titles in the Hello Math Reader series. This somewhat older series combines learning to read and math stories, and each book has several pages of suggested follow-up activities to try. As with any series, some titles and activities have interested us more than others. Today’s activities went [...]
Yesterday I wrote about some introductory math activities we did with a deck of playing cards and the book Dealing With Addition (Canada) (US) by Lynette Long. After getting comfortable with adding playing cards in different combinations, Daegan and I tried a couple rounds of the game she includes in the back of the book. It’s [...]
This morning the boys and I did some activities and played a fun new math game a found in the book Dealing With Addition (Canada) (US) by Lynette Long. The book begins with a general introduction to playing cards, which I quickly went through with the boys, laying out the same cards from a deck I [...]
Yesterday the boys and I did a couple simple activities around the months of the year. I was curious if the boys knew the months in order (Daegan, yes; Gareth almost all) and if they knew how many days were in each month. I started off giving this wooden puzzle to Gareth to do—my aunt [...]
Over the weekend our family watched The Story of Math DVD (Canada) (US), a joint project between the BBC and the Open University. You can read more about it on wikipedia here. It includes four hour-long episodes: The Language of the Universe; The Genius of the East; The Frontiers of Space; and To Infinity and [...]
The other day as I was tidying up, I found this at Daegan’s spot at the kitchen table, a diagram of the area of the laptop at (8.5×11.5) 97.75 square lego blocks: I recognized it as being inspired by a recent MathMatters title we read, Sam’s Sneaker Squares (Canada)(US). In it, young Sam has a [...]
The boys and I have discovered a new author, who has written a few absolutely delightful picture books that touch on various math topics. Over the past few days we’re read A Remainder of One (Canada) (US), Inchworm and a Half (Canada) (US), and our personal favourite, My Full Moon is Square (Canada) (US). All three [...]
I mentioned that last week we got some new board games, like Sum Swamp. The other day, the boys had a chance to try the Animalogic (US) game. It’s a series of logic puzzles, in which you need to get the animals across the river, one at a time (via the teeny bridge): Any animal not [...]
This afternoon the boys and I tried a new game that had just arrived in the post: Sum Swamp: Addition and Subtraction Game. (US) In this game, players move their animal piece (yellow frog, blue turtle, green snake, or red snail) through a swamp by rolling three dice: two number dice (1-6), and an operations die [...]