SamizdatMath

This is a set of 60 puzzles (20 at each level) of "Square Knot" Puzzles focused on practicing problems solving for early learners (K - 2nd grade) using addition. Why you should try these: One of the things that we should be emphasizing from the very earliest of ages is mathematics as problem solving. This is more than writing a bunch of word problems: problem solving is about using various techniques for finding the correct answer. In this set of puzzles, students have to arrange four numbers so

This is the last of this series of task cards using the theme of a "piggy bank" (remember those) to develop understanding and skills using pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. (Sorry fans of the half-dollar and silver dollar...) This is a sorting activity: students take a set of cards, look at the amount stated in the piggy bank and the coins outside and if they match, put it in the "correct" part of the sorting mat (included!) - if it's not a match, put it in the "incorrect" section of the so

Howdy you all! You know, one of the things I love about people who don't know much about math is that they think that there's always one right answer to a math question. Well, there isn't: the reality is that most math questions (even seemingly simple ones like "how much is 2 + 2?") have answers like "well, it depends." In the case of "how much is 2 + 2, it depends on the base system you're working in: if it was base 3, then the answer would be 11 (1 group of 3 and 1 remainder), or it it was bas

This is a collection of 24 different puzzles that challenges your students to find the coin combinations in a piggy bank. There are 8 pages of cards, with 3 puzzles on each card, in both glorious black/grey/white and pastel colors (pink and chartreuse.) Cut out the 24 different cards, laminate and then put out for your kiddos to solve. Lower number cards are easier, higher number cards are tougher. They can solve by putting the coins into the circles printed on the cards. You can check students

This is a collection of task cards where students are given two clues about what coins are inside the piggy bank: the first is the value of the coins, but since there could be many different combinations, there is a second clue, which specifies how many coins the student has to use. Fun! There are two sets of cards: one is in easy-peasy to print black & white, the other is in cutesy colors (pink and light blue.) You can print out the cards, cut and laminate them and have them for the rest of

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

Note: There is now a video tutorial that goes with this activity: Division With Remainders: Just Do It (RIGHT!) Your students are "learning" about division, and if you're using a really, really cruddy curriculum, then they probably all sound like this: "I have 24 blah blah blahs which I'm packing into cases of (choose some divisor of 24.) How many cases will I be able to make. This, my friends, is a lackadaisical and churlish approach to teaching students about solving problems with division.

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

This is a fun little activity that you can do in a class period, or just give for homework, and it will get your kids to think carefully about fractions, most likely beyond the junk that is in whatever textbook you are using. It would also be excellent as an assessment of your students’ basic understanding of how fractions work. The idea is this: do your students have a basic understanding of how fractions work? Do they REALLY? This is how you do it in 5 questions. In questions 1 and 2, we look

I know you all love "Task Cards" - so I made these for you, but at the same time, I had to get "snarky." Forgive me..... See all those stoopid questions that show up on Facebook, Instagram, PInterest, Friendster, Tumblr, Twitter, Woof, etc? The ones where they tell you to calculate some easy-peasy problem and then 83% get the wrong answer? Wouldn't that make a great activity for reviewing order of operations, a.k.a. PEMDAS????? So I collected a whole bunch of these, spread them over a few pag

There are few things in my life that I find more boring than the Common Core State Standards, better known by my the acronym of my own invention, “CoCoStaSta.” Well, I’m sure there is something more boring, like watching anything produced by Khan Academy, but I guess I’m setting a pretty low bar. This is a lesson I wrote for a friend who needed a sure-shot way to impress the grand mystic imperial poo-bahs who rule the fiefdom known as his public school. I think it is such a good lesson that I’

This is one of an occasional series of mondo-tough problems that use small numbers (or no numbers at all!) Here’s how it works: we all teach our students how to take a group of numbers and calculate the range, mean, median and mode. Seems pretty simple, and our students tired of it damned quickly. Can you blame them? It’s just “do what the teacher told me to do, and then write the answer here...” kind of busywork. But what if we were to switch the tables on our students: let’s give them t

First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way: Archimedes never used the Greek letter “pi” when he used it to calculate the area and circumference of a circle. No, never; so just by reading this blurb you've learned something new! The point of this activity is threefold: the first is to show that as you double the diameter of a circle, the area of that circle would quadruple. That’s a very important concept, because many of your students have only experienced relationships where if

How much Cash is in that Stash? If you've ever struggled with finding a fun and effective way to teach the distributive property of multiplication over addition and subtraction, this is the activity for you. Using the example of a suitcase full of dollar bills, students will learn how to effectively count the cash in groups by dividing up the cash into smaller rectangular arrays, whose products can be combined to find a solution. This activity includes a sample problem, specific teaching instru

Here’s the idea: your students are learning about coordinate geometry, so you teach them hoe to find the x and y axis, they plot a few points, maybe you play some lame games, and then they’re off and graphing some equations. Bo-ring! These activities teach students about the conventions of coordinate graphing (they are not “rules”, they are “conventions”) and then applies them to the practice of solving actual problems, from delivering pizza to making maps to guide first responders. The activiti

What goes better with equivalent fractions than ZOMBIES! And what goes better with zombies than Valentine's Day? Each of these ghouls represents a fraction; surrounding them are equivalent fractions with heart-shaped zombie brains that are missing a numerator or denominator. Alas, one of them is a ZOMBIE and cannot be completed! For example, if there is a fraction 1/3 and ?/5 is one of the choices, it can't be completed, because 3rds can't be turned into 5ths. SO MUCH FUN your kids will love i

This packet is my way of serving all masters concerning the implications of summer math work: it has a limited number of activities that are not high stress - in fact, it’s five different games, some classic (Picos, Fermis and Bagels, Salute! & PIG!) and others that will be “new to you” (By the Digits, Close to 100), as well as a geometry puzzle featuring the Sphinx puzzle pieces.  Here’s what you get: • Picos, Fermis and Bagels: This is based on the board game “Mastermind,” which challenges

Do you give summer math work to your students? If so, I imagine it's probably a bunch of those cruddy worksheets that you downloaded off the InterWeb, printed out and told your students to complete for next year's teacher by the beginning of school. You know that your students won't use these, and will more than likely wait to the last minute to rush through them and do a crappo job. So what's the alternative? Well, you could send home this pack o' stuff: there's all kinds of fun stuff to keep

This activity was developed for a teacher whose students were having trouble distinguishing between "divide into groups of 5" and "divide into 5 groups...." To help with this, I designed these task cards for her students; working in pairs, they selected a card from a bowl, which could say things like "use 15 pennies: divide them into groups of 3" or "use 15 pennies; divide them into 3 groups." On their "record sheet," the students have a space to draw their solution and then write the equation w

This has been very successful for me both as an assessment and an activity that students can do at centers or at home. There are 10 different story problems, and a board with 10 spots to place them: each one states the operation you would use to solve it. Your students cut out the cards, they read the problems and then tape or glue the correct problem with the operation or operations that would be used to solve it. Most are single step problems, but some require two steps. A fun thing to do in c