This may seem like an odd question on a Word Nerd blog, but…
Do you like math?
In school, math always made me nervous. I preferred classes like English, history, and foreign languages. Words made me happy.
It wasn’t until I taught math to middle school students with learning disabilities that I appreciated math’s beauty. It’s black and white. It’s logical and predictable. I could explain mathematical concepts to my students easier than I could explain a novel or the inconsistencies of English grammar.
Math didn’t make my stomach hurt anymore. In fact, I kinda liked it.
Years later, as a parent, I wanted my kids to feel confident in math. I knew how to encourage reading, but I needed help finding a way to make arithmetic and problem solving fun. Luckily, I found a great book: Family Math by Jean Kerr Stenmark, Virginia Thompson, and Ruth Cossy.
The creators of Family Math used research and experience to develop activities to help “parents and children spend time together doing something that’s fun, challenging, and important.” Most of the activities use a hands-on approach and a game-like format. Topics include logical reasoning, numbers and operations, patterns, geometry and spatial reasoning, and estimation.
The cool thing about this book is I can sit down with all my kids at the kitchen table and do the activities together, even though my youngest is in second grade and my oldest takes Algebra II. That’s because Family Math focuses on concepts, basic math skills, and problem solving. Today we did an activity on palindromes, numbers that look the same forwards and backwards. (just like palindrome words!) We found patterns as well as practiced basic arithmetic.
Every lesson in Family Math explains why the activity is important, how to do it, and offers suggestions for extension or adaptation. Here are a few of our favorites:
Pico, Fermi, Bagel
- Why: To practice making deductions by the process of elimination and to reinforce the concept of place value.
- How: The leader picks a three digit number with no repeating numbers, and players take turns guessing the number. After each guess, the leader gives clues. Bagel means no digits are correct, Pico means a digit is correct but in the wrong place, and Fermi means a digit is correct and in the right place.
The Sum What Dice Game
- Why: To practice addition and mental arithmetic
- How: Each player gets a strip with the digits 1-9 on it. Players take turns rolling two dice. With each roll, a players may either cover the sum rolled or two numbers that add up to the sum. When a player can’t cover any appropriate numbers, because they’ve already been used, he’s out and adds up the numbers uncovered. The goal is to be the player with the fewest numbers (points) uncovered.
My kids have been home from school all week (again.) With Family Math, we’ve had some fun together while using our brains. I highly recommend it.
Can you suggest any other books to encourage confidence with math?
Thanks!
Julia
Since my left and right brain are rarely on speaking terms, this book is very interesting to me. My Daughter has a brain that works equally well with verbal or numerical topics. I believe we’ll be looking into this one.
I wish my kids were young enough for this book – I am a total math geek! When Gwen was practicing for the SAT, she’d ask me to go over the questions she got wrong, and I was in heaven.
I had no idea you were a math geek – I guess, like me, you’re proof that word nerds don’t have to hate math!
Uh, I definitely need this book. I avoided math at all costs bc I thought I was so bad at it. I finally learnd that it’s something we can all learn to do, even if not naturally gifted. I wish though, that knowledge had come earlier. Thanks for the recommendation! Family night fun!
Yes, Amy. Definitely try it. We have lots of fun with it.
Great recommendation! It’s so funny, I just had a math teacher friend ask me if I thought agents might like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure type of book with a “math emphasis.” Math can definitely be intimidating to her students.