Throwing Marshmallows

Nope, not the “deadly sin” greed. The dice game Greed! Julie on the Living Math email list (which is an awesome resource for teaching math) forwarded this link to Greed and the boys and I have been having fun playing.

In a nutshell, you have 10 dice. You roll the dice and see what you score. You then have the option to roll again and try to score additional points…the risk however is that if you do not score, then you loose all your points for that turn. So you need to decide if you are going to keep the points you gained on that round or risk them all.

The boys have decided that it is basically “Deal or No Deal” with dice. Funny how much they got a kick out of that aspect of it.

Just thought that I would pass on a fun way to get familiar with how probability works. And just an all around fun game too. Oh and I have to gloat as well that I won the game today! So there!
~Stephanie

I found LivingMath.net at the beginning of this year and have found it to be an absolutely wonderful math resource. From the website:

I want to build a bridge. I’d like to close the gap between math and history, science, literature and humanity created by the isolated way we traditionally approach math education.

In teaching my own children, tutoring and furthering my own self education, I’ve found that math history and literature humanizes math, makes it come alive, and provides the context needed to enjoy and retain learning. Early exposure to real mathematics in real settings without requiring mastery of arithmetic on a set timetable has been a key to the incredible ease my kids have attained mastery when the time is right for them.

The website is chock full of ideas for different ways to approach math and the related email list is a wonderful place to ask questions and get lots of feedback about all sorts of ways to approach math. You will find lots of ways to approach math from a hands-on, holistic pov in addition to lots of discussions about all sorts of different math curricula. I love the mix and it works great with our approach this year of focusing on different math concepts and pulling in a variety of resources.

I especially like her ideas on approaching math from a history and literature perspective. This approach has worked really well with Jason so far…he really likes the Penrose, the Mathematical Cat books and The Number Devil which have been great at exposing him to a variety of math concepts. Reading about them and getting familiar with the concepts will help as we get more and more into them. He seems really drawn to certain concepts like Fibonacci numbers. We have also been reading a bit about the mathematicians themselves and that has given an added dimension to our learning (I personally have been enjoying this aspect as well as I love history!)
I have found that a lot of the folks on the LivingMath.net email list have right-brained/visual-learners. Which makes sense, I think, as we tend to have very non-traditional learners and are always on the look out for new and creative ways to approach math!

Definitely check it out. The website could take you a little while to work through as there are tons of great ideas and especially book recommendations and reviews.

Enjoy!

~Stephanie

I love card games. And we discovered a new one this week: Begger Your Neighbor. I had picked up The Book of Cards for Kids card game book at Fun Books while at the VaHomeschoolers Conference and we have been learning lots of new card games out of it. I think that I enjoy it because it is easy to pick up and explain and there is a good element of surprise to it. I also came back from about 1 card left to actually beat Kyle once!

I have several card game books (including one that was my Mom’s when she was a girl). I don’t know what it is about cards but I have always enjoyed playing them. The boys have learned that this is my weakness.

Jason has asked about learning Texas Hold-Em…so I guess that is my next one to learn. And we need to get some poker chips…

~Stephanie

Tags: card games

What did I just say? Yes, we watched a really fun math documentary today. I guess that is what you would call it. The title of the DVD is The Story of 1 (and it is available through Netflix). All about, you guessed it, the history of the number 1. Pretty cool stuff actually. How people started counting using lines on sticks which then progressed to using tokens and the development of math. Takes you from the Sumerians, to the Greeks, to the Romans, the Indians (who invented Arabic numerals we use today and the number 0), and continues on until the importance of binary numbers today. Throws in a bit about Pythagoras, Fibonacci and other important mathematicians. Talks about just why 1 and 0 are so important. (I know that I personally had never given it much thought!)

And they do it in a really fun way…hard to really explain, but it had Jason (9 years old) laughing out loud (always a good thing!) Kyle (6 years old) did not enjoy it as much…found some of it boring. Mainly because much of it went over his head. He did laugh at certain parts and I am sure that he got something out of it. But I could see the connections going off in Jason head as he watched it. At one point when Kyle was complaining about a boring part, Jason told him to be quiet because he really liked it and it was not boring!

When we finished watching it, Jason went back to certain parts to watch them over again. I have noticed that while Jason does not like doing “arithmetic” he actually does grasp (and enjoy!) math concepts very quickly. He also really seems to enjoy the historical aspect of math. We read The Number Devil several months ago (still need to review it here!) and he really liked it and I had a feeling that he would like this as well. They had a similar feel…irreverent and focusing more on math concepts then math facts.

I also want to check out a book called Mathematicians are People Too which sounds like fun. I personally love history and Jason seems to be enjoying the math history that we have done. I love being able to tie everything in together…and it really is the way that Jason learns best. He needs to have some context and interest in what he is learning. I have also heard good things about the Theoni Pappas books like The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat.

I have to admit that this stuff is as much fun for me as it is for the boys! I know that I am learning tons and I love that I get to learn right along with them. Homeschooling at its’ best.

~Stephanie