Math and the World

I'm learning to use Desmos and I've created a few activities kids can try out at home. The activities below vary in difficulty...

Asking math questions while waiting for lunch...

This morning, over his morning oatmeal, I asked Parker to think about a classic math task. I began with a single hexagon with the dots...

We recently visited Bay Beach Amusement Park while in Wisconsin (it's awesome by the way). Rides there cost between 1-4 tickets and...

We've all seen math problems like this. Problems where the context or numbers are ridiculous. And what might we say to a kid in this...

I observed a lesson in a classroom today and while observing I began to wonder what Parker would do with the problem with a little...

M: What'd you do in math today? P: Doubles and halves. M: Really, what numbers did you do half of? P: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ,10 M:...

Parker wanted pumpkin pie with dinner tonight. After his first slice he asked for more. So I said his payment was to answer: "what...

I've talked about Number Talks before. Recently I've had the chance to do a couple of number talks in a local sixth grade teacher (thanks...

Parker has told me that he knows what 90 and 90 is (or sometimes what 70 and 70 is). About. A. Million. Times. Here was our latest...

P: I can count to one hundred by fives. M: Okay, let's hear it. P: 5, 10, 15, 20, ... 100 C: What would come after 100? P: 105 M: I...

I'm reading The Poisonwood Bible for my book club and I just realized we meet this Sunday, not next Sunday, so I'm freaking out about how...

…just invert and multiply! This post is a bit longer and a bit more didactic than many of my others, but I think it's interesting all the...

This post brings together number talks, doing fractions, and ways to work on math with your child without doing drills. Recently,...

People often ask me how to teach kids math facts. Before I get to that I want to emphasize that young children (preschool, kindergarten)...

This post is different than most of my other What Do You Think posts. It's more of a big picture view focused on what it means to do...

On Meet the Teacher night before the school year started we got a little bag of math mainpulatives to take home. It says we need to keep...

On the walk home today Parker was excited to tell me about the number talk they had done in school because he got to share his strategy....

Last night Courtney and Parker were reading Each Orange Had 8 Slices by Paul Giganti, Jr. and illustrated by Donald Crews. They didn't...

I recently had the chance to do some math with a great group of grades 4-12 teachers from our local school district. They were taking...