SamizdatMath

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 NOT your typical "is this a prime or composite number, and if it is composite, show the prime factor" exercise. No, this is an activity that actually demonstrates how figuring out prime factors is linked to encrypting information securely. If you know about the Russian Postal Service puzzle, then you'll appreciate this. There are 10 different puzzles, and then a "DIY" where your students can make their own "prime puzzlers" to share with one another. If they're really good, send them to

This is a set of puzzles where students work independently to estimate how many cubes it will take to cover a digit or a written number, then cover it with rods of different lengths, and re-organize them on a grid to show how many orange and white rods it is equivalent to. The student then reads the number as tens and ones and writes it down. This is a fun activity for kindergarten and first graders, because it helps students to develop estimation skills, and then carry them over to other number

Here's the deal: you want your students to practice rounding off numbers so you give them one of these rando "worksheets" with lots of numbers saying "round off to the nearest ten," "round off to the nearest hundred," yadda yadda yadda and they do it and forget about it and it's just a superficial way to approach this important topic. This takes the whole topic and reverses it, making it far more interesting and useful: each booklet starts by asking "When rounded off to the nearest thousand, it

And we're back! This is the first of a set of "coin card" activities that I designed for our first grade teachers and which received universal "thumbs up, Robert!" from the students who used them. I even tried it out on a 2nd grader who needed some remediation and she went to town on it as well. So what's so good about these? Let me count the ways: 1) Quantity: there are 30 different cards, which means that its not so many that your kids will get lost, but not so few that they'll finish them

This is an attempt to straighten out an important misconception while teaching young children how to sequence the basic numbers from 0 through 9 (also known as "digits"), and then extend that to 20. Wait, did I miss something? As a matter of fact, I didn’t, and that’s because it is everyone else who is missing something: the basic numbers are not 1 through 10; they are, in fact, 0 through 9. The number 10 is not related to the numbers 0 through 9, because these are the “single digit numbers” an

Ah yes, nice to see you back again. This is a number comparison activity I developed for my first grade teacher, but I've also used it with my kindergarteners and pre-k. It's cute, but not cutesy. Students take a number tile and place it on the game sheet at the top. They then take additional number tiles and decide whether it is an "elephant" (bigger than the number at the top) or "mouse" (smaller than the number at the top) and paste the correct stamp in the second column. A second version i

This is an attempt to straighten out an important misconception while teaching young children how to sequence the digits from 0 through 9. Wait, did I miss something? As a matter of fact, I didn’t, and that’s because it is everyone else who is missing something: the basic numbers are not 1 through 10; they are, in fact, 0 through 9. The number 10 is not related to the numbers 0 through 9, because these are the “single digit numbers” and 10, if you’ve looked at it closely, is a 2 digit number.

Number Sense is an important component of a child's ability to learn and understand mathematics. However, number sense in the early grades is more than matching a numeral to a quantity: it is also having a "feel" for how numbers compare to one another. It is the basis for how we differentiate answers that are reasonable from those that are nonsensical. It is how we solve problems without the aid of a pencil, calculator or algorithm. This packet focuses on a specific aspect of number sense in t

Howdy peeps, how are you all doing? I think you’re really going to like this activity (it is not a “product,” it is an activity) and if you paid the royal sum of $3.95 for it, you should consider it a bargain: it represents the work of someone who has 30 years of pre-K through college mathematics behind him, so you know it’s good for your kids. This activity is based on the idea that in order to embed concepts you have to develop “rich associations” between them. That is, when the student “se

Here's a new version of this SmartBoard activity: the idea is to teach subtraction skills by "jumping" from one number to another number through smaller steps. Press the button and two numbers will appear in each box on the number line. Your kids can grab one of the little figures on the size and show the different "jumps" and label their size to get from one number to another, which shows their "difference" better know as the answer to a Subtraction problem! Check this out - it's free! What d

Ben and Ilene are having an argument: they are looking at a number line with a 0 on one end, and 1 million on the other end. The question is: where would 1 thousand be? Ben & Ilene have different insights into the problem: Ben says that 1,000 is a large number and so is a million, so it must be close to that side. Ilene says that 1 thousand is much smaller than 1 million, and it belongs closer to 0. Is either of them correct, or is one of them "more correct" than the other? I've included 5 exam

“One, Some or None” is an activity that develops critical thinking skills by provoking students to think about the multiples and divisibility. Three cards are selected from a deck of clues; the students’ task is not to figure out “the answer” but what number of answers are possible. Included in this packet is an extensive description and discussion of how to develop these problem solving and critical thinking skills, while focusing on the concept of multiples and divisors.

What goes better together than a new class getting to know one another and doing math at the same time? These five activities will help your students get to know each other better, while engaging them in fun math activities involving surveys, computation, problem solving and numeration. Four of the activities should be done in pairs. You can use the data collected during the activities to make a graphs, and hang up the "make a creature" activity on your empty walls. Have fun!

Straight out of Gowanus, Brooklyn, here are bright & beautiful illustrated subway cars that can be connected to make a train of number facts. NOW IN COLOR! I've taken these specialty created subway illustrations (available NOWHERE ELSE!) and re-touched them in beautiful color ready to be printed, laminated and cut. Keep them for a lifetime! Print out each set of b& w subway cards on a different colored card stock (to keep them sorted) and challenge children to a variety of different skip count

Number Snakes is a game that develops strategies dealing with place value, numeration, seriation and proportionality. Students choose two cards to make a double digit number, name it, and then decide on which "band" of a snake it should go. However, as more bands of the snakes are filled in, the game becomes more difficult, as careful attention must be paid to how far apart each number should be. There are 7 different levels of the game, from filling in 3 spaces, to filling in 8 spaces, as wel