SamizdatMath

This is a mostly excellent introduction for your 2nd - 4th grade students to the wonderful world of fractions. These are "fill in the fraction" games that use Cusenaire Rods as well as Pattern Blocks. The games are designed to be set up in under a minute: hand out the game boards to your students, and by making a long snip, a shorter snip, and 8 super short snips they'll have a game they can use to develop and deepen their basic understanding of how fractions work. The first thing these "hands o

FACT: Students need more practice solving subtraction problems. FACT: This collection has lots of subtraction problems. FACT: Not all subtraction problems are the same: some are "take away," some are "let's compare one with another," some are "I have something and took away this, now I have this...." This is a collection of over 200 different "BIG Busy Bee Hive" puzzles where students practice subtraction in a context that is fun and thoughtful. That is, yes, they get lots of opportunities to do

FACT: Students need more practice solving subtraction problems. FACT: This collection has lots of subtraction problems. FACT: Not all subtraction problems are the same: some are "take away," some are "let's compare one with another," some are "I have something and took away this, now I have this...." This is a collection of over 200 different "Busy Bee Hive" puzzles where students practice subtraction in a context that is fun and thoughtful. That is, yes, they get lots of opportunities to do "ta

Description FACT: Students need more practice solving subtraction problems. FACT: This collection has lots of subtraction problems. FACT: Not all subtraction problems are the same: some are "take away," some are "let's compare one with another," some are "I have something and took away this, now I have this...." This is a collection of over 200 different "Busy Bee Hive" puzzles where students practice subtraction in a context that is fun and thoughtful. That is, yes, they get lots of opportuniti

Description FACT: Students need more practice solving subtraction problems. FACT: This collection has lots of subtraction problems. FACT: Not all subtraction problems are the same: some are "take away," some are "let's compare one with another," some are "I have something and took away this, now I have this...." This is a collection of over 200 different "Busy Bee Hive" puzzles where students practice subtraction in a context that is fun and thoughtful. That is, yes, they get lots of opportuniti

FACT: Students need more practice solving subtraction problems. FACT: This collection has lots of subtraction problems. FACT: Not all subtraction problems are the same: some are "take away," some are "let's compare one with another," some are "I have something and took away this, now I have this...." This is a collection of over 200 different "Busy Bee Hive" puzzles where students practice subtraction in a context that is fun and thoughtful. That is, yes, they get lots of opportunities to do "ta

Here’s the problem with teaching any kind of technique in mathematics: once you have kids practice it, they discard all the other techniques they know, even if the ones they discard are faster, more efficient and more accurate. Such is the case with teaching “stacking” of addition problems. Sure, it’s a great skill to have, but is it always necessary? I say this: based on some statistic I ran, between 70 - 80% of all addition problems with two addends don’t need to be stacked. Yet we act as if

This is a rounding game I developed for a colleague at my school: I am a working teacher (as I have been for the past 37 years) so I know stuff. And here’s what I know: games are fun, learners like to play games, and games should exercise the learner’s mind in a variety of ways. Which is how I developed the “rounding” and “un-rounding” games. The “Rounding Game” is your basic bingo game: you turn over two cards, round off the number to the nearest ten, find that rounded number on the bingo board

This is a rounding game I developed for a colleague at my school: I am a working teacher (as I have been for the past 37 years) so I know stuff. And here’s what I know: games are fun, learners like to play games, and games should exercise the learner’s mind in a variety of ways. Which is how I developed the “rounding” and “un-rounding” games. The “Rounding Game” is your basic bingo game: you turn over two cards, round off the number to the nearest ten, find that rounded number on the bingo board

This is a rounding game I developed for a colleague at my school: I am a working teacher (as I have been for the past 37 years) so I know stuff. And here’s what I know: games are fun, learners like to play games, and games should exercise the learner’s mind in a variety of ways. Which is how I developed the “rounding” and “un-rounding” games. The “Rounding Game” is your basic bingo game: you turn over two cards, round off the number to the nearest ten, find that rounded number on the bingo board

This is a rounding game I developed for a colleague at my school: I am a working teacher (as I have been for the past 37 years) so I know stuff. And here’s what I know: games are fun, learners like to play games, and games should exercise the learner’s mind in a variety of ways. Which is how I developed the “rounding” and “un-rounding” games. The “Rounding Game” is your basic bingo game: you turn over two cards, round off the number to the nearest ten, find that rounded number on the bingo board

GaOn is a multi-digit addition/subtraction strategy game that can be played in different ways. Players take turns selecting cards and attempt to form an equation that satisfies the conditions written on the challenge card. Includes game boards, challenge cards, recording sheets and detailed instructions. SamizdatMath does not use or endorse the use of "cutesy" clip art.

BY SPECIAL REQUEST! For those of you who enjoyed Coin KenKen and Ultra Coin KenKen, I know bring you TURBO COIN KENKEN: a 5 x 5 grid with half dollars, quarter dollars, dimes, nickels and pennies to arrange on a grid so that the values equal to the shaded in area, and all coins appear once in each column and row. 5 puzzles, 5 answer sheets. Happy Problem Solving to All!

79 89 99 119? 129? Take 2: 134 124 114 84? 74? Do your students struggle to count by 10s across 100? If they're doing mental math, then they probably will at one time or another. So why not help them practice this so they don't say things like "75, 85, 95, uh, uh, 105?" This is a "three-fer" - you get the group game "roller coaster" where a group of students compete cooperatively to count up and down by tens between a bottom and top number. For example, the first students says 78, the next one

This "product" is an exercise in the form of a "lightly" competitive game that uses addition and subtraction on the number line (which was invented in 1685 by the mathematician John Wallis) that students can play in any number of configurations (pairs, triplets, etc.) and in any number of ways (rolling a single die, rolling 2 dice, using the numbers individually or in combination, etc.) There are versions that use 3, 4, 5 and 6 rolls. There is a number line under each game for your students prac

Are you sick and tired of drilling & killing your kids on the combinations of 10 and just saying, "okay, there's nothing fun about this, so let's just move on." Sorry, I've got to call BS on that. Because learning combinations of 10 is also an opportunity for your students to do some problem solving, do some algebraic thinking, as well as make many, many mistakes. These are NOT worksheets! They are puzzles and are designed to be "hands on" and "manipulative." That is, your students will work w

This is a set of "inkblot" subtraction strategies that are much different from the cruddy old "drill & kill" worksheets with cutesy characters you probably are using. These activities engage your students in deep thinking about how subtraction works and the strategies we use to solve the column based subtraction algorithm. Do NOT use this if your kids prefer to do routine sorts of problems or they don't want to deepen their understanding of mathematics. The goal here is to deepen conceptual

Okay, you're teaching your kids how to do two and three column addition.... WHAT A SNOOZE! I promise you, this is going to be fun! Here's how it works: you've taught your students about regrouping/carrying in multi-column addition, and they've done a few problems and you want them to have a little more experience with it while doing some deep thinking. This is the activity for you! This collection of "ink blot addition puzzles" will engage your students in a completely different way, because

I know you've been holding your breaths for something to come out of the SamizdatMath laboratories, and here it is: The Fishy Addend Game! This is a "gameified" version of this activity, and I think it really rocks, for many, many reasons! a) It get players thinking "beyond the algorithm" - to fill up their tanks, they have to estimate, round off and strategize! B) It is adaptable to many levels of players: using the templates, you can make versions that are as challenging or as supported as

Sforno is a game I designed to help children learn about different types of attributes. The game is similar to dominoes in that students take turns putting out a "connector" card based on the number of similar or different attributes and then placing a "creature card" that connects it to another creature. There are also 21 different puzzles that use groups of Creature Cards connecting to one another. Sforno is a fun game that is exciting for grades 2 and up.! Comes with full teaching instructi