SamizdatMath

What are your students going to make their dads for Fathers Day? Yet another pen holder or a photo mouse pad? I'm a father, and I can guarantee you that those won't fly. Why not make dad a puzzle that he can patchka around with for a few months or years? This is a "threefer" activity: it gets your kids to work on solving geometry puzzles, which they then make into a Fathers Day gift for that special father in their life, AND it is a "clue game" where kids classify shapes according to their att

What you’ve just purchased is a very decent alternative to “tangrams” and “pentominoes.” Please allow me to introduce you to the wonderful world of “Van Hiele Tiles.” Actually, these have nothing to do with the great educational theorists Dina van Hiele Geldorf and her husband, Pierre van Hiele (but it does, which you’ll see if you continue reading.) This puzzle originated in Germany with the Anchor Stone Company, which made building blocks and geometric puzzles using an artificial “stone” made

Here's the deal: you want your kids to do challenging puzzles with interesting shapes (I'm talking to >you<, pattern blocks!) but the problem is that many of these puzzles are waaaay too hard for your pre-K through 1st graders. Even a 2 piece pentomino puzzle would require sorting through 66 combinations of 12 different pentomino pieces before locating the correct pair to make the shape. This is an advanced version of my other set of pentomino challenges, Pentomino Challenges for the Earl

Here's the deal: you want your kids to do challenging puzzles with interesting shapes (I'm talking to >you<, pattern blocks!) but the problem is that many of these puzzles are waaaay too hard for your pre-K through 1st graders. Even a 2 piece pentomino puzzle would require sorting through 105 combinations of 15 different pentomino pieces before locating the correct pair to make the shape. What I've done here is break down the process into three steps: the first set of puzzles practices id

Do you have a set of Geoblocks sitting around in your classroom waiting for someone to do something interesting with them? Have you exhausted the sorting and identifying edges, faces and vertices (or "corners," if you will....)? Do you want something really neat to do with them which will develop your students' abilities to visualize and represent 3 dimensional shapes in 2 dimensions? This is a set of 16 Geoblock "search and sketch" puzzles. Students look at the sheet and find the block which m

This set of 10 different "estimation stations" develops students' understanding of length, perimeter and area by using Cuisenaire Rods of different lengths. Students record their estimates on a "data sheet" and then make and record exact measurements, measuring such things as the length of their foot, the area of a hand and the perimeter of a design.