SamizdatMath

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

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!

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

This is Max Forstat; she owns a building which has 4 apartments per floor. There are 6 floors in the building. She decides to number the apartments from 1 to 24, starting from the ground floor. Apartments 1 through 4 are on the first floor, 5 - 8 on the second, and so on. How would you figure out which floor each apartment is located? This activity gets students involved in performing division with and without remainders, and then using the remainder to determine the floor and location of the ap

The concept is simple: add two adjacent hexagons to find the sum and fill in the hexagon ABOVE them, and subtract two adjacent hexagons to fill in the difference in the hexagon BELOW them! Sounds easy, right? Well, maybe not: it's not like you can just start in the middle row and move up and down: to solve it, you have to locate the right place to start, which may be a row up or down, or near the top or bottom. As you fill in each of the solutions, more and more clues emerge, and eventually th

This is a collection of 34 different hexagonal subtraction/additional/logic puzzle cards (hence, the title above) which uses 5 rows containing clues that have to be figured out by moving around the puzzle in different directions. Very simply, each pair of hexagons add up to the hexagon above that connects them. However, in many cases you can't add the two hexagons together, because there is missing information that won't show up until you solve other parts of the puzzle. It's great because not o

This is a collection of 40 different hexagonal subtraction/additional/logic puzzle cards (hence, the title above.) It includes a solution recording sheet, so your students can do them in any order they want. These would be best used for advanced first graders (who want to tackle double digit addition), 2nd graders who are practicing single and double digit subtraction and addition, and assessing and remediating 3rd graders and above. What's nice about these puzzles is that they are "threefers" -

Greetings, Phrens! This is an activity that takes 1 - 2 class sessions and teaches your young students (grades 2 - 5) something that is less scary than human reproduction or racial discrimination: negative numbers! Seriously, if you aren't introducing your students to negative numbers at an early age, then you're not doing the best job you could at being a math teacher, and I'm not saying that to hurt your feelings, but because I want you to look good (and, as my hero, Vidal Sassoon said ove

This is the same as Number Logic Puzzles Silly Creatures with a Chanukah holiday theme, which should really motivate your students! This is a fun little booklet that your students can put together in about 3 minutes and we’ll really give them some fun working logically - and because this is something you purchased from me, your kids will also have a chance to make their own puzzles to share with one another. Ain’t that cool? Comes in b//w and color booklets - the color booklets have been forma

Okay, you covered “odd” and “even” number with your students and they now know that all even numbers have a 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8 in the ones place (they don’t “end” with those digits, because numbers don’t have a “beginning” or “end,” they have “places”) and are odd if they have the digits 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9 in the ones place. All good! But let’s ramp this up a bit: your students now know one of the basic concepts of mathematics, better known as “parity,” which gives them an opportunity to conduct an i

This is a fun little booklet that your students can put together in about 3 minutes and we’ll really give them some fun working logically - and because this is something you purchased from me, your kids will also have a chance to make their own puzzles to share with one another. Ain’t that cool? Comes in b//w and color booklets - the color booklets have been formatted to give you a jolt of color without using up all your ink! There are also single page and double page formats to save enough more

This is both a set of 78 different task cards as well as a strategy game: students work in pairs selecting a mental math problem to solve making change, and then use that solution to cover up a square on the game board. They can play on one board and compete to get 3, 4 or 5 in a row, or play on separate boards for "bingo" 5 in a row play. The cards come in black/white and color; each challenges students to make change using mental math. The goal is to develop a variety of mental math strategie

What's a tokidoki, you ask? Well, there are several varieties, and basically they are born with a certain number of segments on their body, and then grow new ones over the year. Some are born with 3 segments and add 4 more each year, some are born with 2 segments and add 5 more each year. There are lots of different types of tokidokies and they all grown using different patterns. This activity uses tokidokis to promote the idea of using patterns to solve a problem. If you have a tokidoki that w

These are highly unusual puzzles that are a great way to practice place value while stimulating your students' abilities in deductive reasoning. Each puzzle is set up as an "acrostic" that has to be filled in vertically and horizontally. The "beginner" puzzles are simple to solve, but they are valuable in that they help students to stop thinking of assembling place value by "order" (such as "80 + 4 = 84," instead of alternating "4 + 80 = 84") There are 20 different puzzles that use ones and tens

To houses are on the same block: their numbers are 5 apart, and the numbers add up to 33. What are the numbers of the two houses? This is a challenging problem, one that is usually given to algebra students in high school (unfortunately, this represents the kind of "pseudo-content" that is given to high school kids, because really, does a 14 year old really care about the answer?) However, these are fun problems for younger students to do, because they are challenging and everybody loves solvin

As you know, one of the things I have always advocated is giving children math problems that are interesting and challenging. I know, I know, this flies directly in the face of “well, if we give them hard things to do, then they’ll get discouraged and think math is hard.” Well, the truth is this: math is hard! And let me say another thing: anybody, young or old, experienced or not, is either lying or has never done “real math” if they think it is “easy.” In this activity, I’m pushing you to cha

You have a locked briefcase that you want to send to your friend on the other side of the country. You put a lock on it and keep the key around your neck. There is no second key, you can't duplicate this key, and you don't want to send it to your friend, because you're afraid it might get lost or stolen. How does your friend open the case? That's a question that has a lot of relevance to the use of prime numbers! But I digress: this is a set of activities designed to enhance your students' un