SamizdatMath

Note: You can get this material for free if you purchase Set of 10 Wooden Soma Cubes This is the first of a set of increasingly difficult challenges which are based on the 7 piece Soma cube. The Soma cube, if you aren't familiar with it, is a 3 x 3 cube dissected into 7 different pieces. It makes an excellent platform for inspiring your students to do 3-Dimensional spatial problem solving. This is the first collection that is based on "2 piece" puzzles. There are three different levels of cha

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

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

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

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

For your enjoyment & edification. Solutions coming soon.....

Yes, you saw it with rats, turkeys and reindeers; fact it, you're eventually going to buy one of these, so why not snowmen and snowballs? NO JOKES PLEASE! Okay, the concept is simple: take the snowballs numbered from 1 - 6 and arrange them on the three sides so that each side adds up to 9. Rearrange them and they add up to 10. Do it again, and they add up to 11. Then do it one more time and they add up to 12. Record your results and see for the patterns that emerge in the corner numbers. Want

Do you have a bucket full of plastic links in one of your bins and wondering what can you possibly do with a huge pail of these colorful plastic links. Your prayers have been answered! These are 10 different measurement cards, in 8 x 10 as well as 5 x 8 that you can print out, laminate and set up "estimation stations" which your kids will enjoy. They will estimate the length of their hand, and then measure it, as well as their foot, arm and around their head. They'll measure the longest and sh

This activity features at least 1 Billion (that's 1,000,000,000) different long division problems. How did I do it? Answer: a very, very small font! All kidding aside, this is an incredibly expandable activity that has an unlimited number of puzzles, with each puzzle having several different solutions. Students start with a blank long division problem, with blanks left where the divisor and dividend should be. Some blanks are not too sophisticated: it may be a single digit divisor into a double