‘For the Love of Math’ Archives
Thinking About Mathematics
A while back, someone wrote to me asking about math and workbooks, and recently a couple others have asked some similar questions, so I thought I’d bring the topic here to share some of my thoughts about it. Here’s the initial inquiry and my responses: “My [Read More]
Playing with Color Tiles & Cubes
We’ve enjoyed lots of games and activities with one inch wooden color tiles and cubes. Here are a few of the highlights. Scoop and Sort: Scoop a handful of tiles and sort them into various piles, columns, or groupings of colors. How many of each color do you have? [Read More]
What do you see?
When you’re walking around in your everyday life, do you see the mathematics all around you? Do you notice shapes, sizes, angles, and patterns? Do you see the potential for counting and sorting and comparing items? Not as lessons, but just as cool things to [Read More]
Playing with Geoboards
Geoboards come in a variety of sizes and patterned grids, and they’re lots of fun to play with using an assortment of colorful rubber bands. You can create repetitive designs, six-pointed stars, triangles, squares, hexagons, rectangles, and all kinds of other shapes. [Read More]
Playing with Cuisenaire Rods
Cuisenaire rods are colorful wooden rods ranging from 1cm to 10cm lengths. They’re great for creating patterns, counting, sorting, measuring, adding, multiplying, and all sorts of other fun explorations. Although the rods were originally created for formalized classroom [Read More]
Making Comparisons
Earlier this week, I found some old notes I had written about playing with pattern blocks and Cuisenaire rods when Ben was about seven years old. We had been stacking the pattern blocks into towers and measuring them with the Cuisenaire rods. While doing this, we made [Read More]
Fun Frames for Block Designs
Designing and playing with wooden blocks of all kinds can be lots of fun. Sometimes it’s nice to use a frame to give yourself a specific space in which to work. A wooden serving tray with raised edges works well as a frame for playing with square color tiles, [Read More]
Playing with Pattern Blocks
Wooden pattern blocks are wonderful in so many ways. You can create designs with them, build with them, and play games with them. You can talk about their colors, shapes, angles, and how they relate to each other. You can lay them out in repetitive patterns or beautiful [Read More]
Math and Literature
When Ben was younger, I loved reading aloud to him. We enjoyed all kinds of good children’s literature. Reading together was a sweet way to spend time together, to learn new things, and to enjoy good stories. At some point, I became familiar with books that [Read More]
Beautiful Pattern Blocks
I love wooden pattern blocks. They feel good to the touch, come in bright colors, and are wonderful for creating beautiful designs. We have a large collection of them in a basket in our living room, and whenever I put them out on the coffee table, people of all ages [Read More]
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