Showing posts with label Playful Math. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Playful Math. Show all posts

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Playful Math Carnival 180

 May I March from April?

I was supposed to post the March/April Playful Math Carnival, but it's May! May the 4th even, happy Star Wars Day to them that celebrate it.

180 is a pretty amazing math number. 18 divisors, more than any smaller number. 18 divisors also makes it refactorable, divisible by the Very abundant, as you might guess. Harshad (or Niven) also, divisible by the sum of its digits. The sum of two squares (both squares of divisors!) For Euler's totient function, 

Of course, 180 is probably most famous in math for being the sum of the angles in a triangle, or have the degrees of a full turn. How would you prove the triangle relation? (I tell my math history students that is one of the few theorems every math major should be able to prove.)


Speaking of triangles and math history, Pat Bellew discusses Heron and his formulas.

Chris Luzniak read a book that made him realize he needs Math Therapy. Chris is hosts Debate Math podcast with Rob Baier. I loved their episode on comparing teaching reading and math with married couple Courtney and Ryan Flessner.

Denise Gaskins, the home and creator of this here blog carnival, had a math journaling post with three elementary math games. Also don't miss her Math Game Mondays.

Ann Elise Record shared a great padlet of math games. It includes a link to her podcast, discussing meaningful math games with Dr. Nicki Newton.

Rachel Lambert shared the start of some research into mathematical games and their use with teachers. Really exciting and I can't wait to see where it goes!

Howie Hua, modern master of math memes, had the fun Tom and Jerry meme above show up in a reddit Explain the Joke thread. Speaking of Howie, this Star Wars math made me think of another of his memes.


Chalkdust, one of my favorite math periodicals, had an article looking at the discrete math underlying Sudoku. (While you're there, be sure to check out Dear Dirichlet, the funniest mathiest advice column ever.)

One of the great math events this spring has been showings of Counted Out, a documentary examining the importance of math and math education in modern life, centering the work of Robert Moses. Here you can read more about the movie and the people featured. I have never had a stronger endorsement for an education documentary.

The delight of March for me was Ayliean MacDonald's Math Art March. 

One idea I tried out for Math Art March was a pattern themed Exquisite Corpse game. This is an art game where you fold a paper and each subsequent artist can only see the very end of the previous artist's work, and draws off of that.

Jenna Laib writes about Anderson's Endless Zeroes, an elementary math investigation into a unit conversion problem.

Daniel Scher created a sweet dynamic applet to use sliding rulers to think about integer addition and subtraction.

I was pretty happy with this Escherized version of a hexagon dissection I saw. Play yourself in GeoGebra. 

I've just started on these, but Arula Ratnakar writes mathematical fiction at ClarkesWorld.

The two most recent math books I'm most excited about were The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice, about one of my favorite mathematicians, and How Did You Count?, another great Christopher Danielson book that makes the reader the mathematician.

We'll close with the math blog-o-sphere's most reliable writer, Dylan Kane, who took a break from deep thinking about learning and teaching to share a fun folding problem from Play With Your Math.

Sorry again this was so delayed! If you're interested in hosting the Playful Math Carnival, give it a go! Share what you've loved. The previous was at Denise's Let's Play Math, and the next might also be Denise. 

Coming up on my blog this month will be two elementary math and art activities, and some great new math games from my senior seminar.

To close, I think I have to share one of the Star Wars Standards of Mathematical Practice memes that Dave Coffey got us making a few years ago.

















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Thursday, December 19, 2024

Playful Math Carnival 177

Interesting time to be hosting this carnival! I feel like there's a small resurgence with blogging, and I want to be part of it. I've really missed writing informally professionally. I've been a part-time host since Math Teachers at Play 22, 14 years ago!, and a big part of the original purpose of the blog was to collect, curate and share things that delighted and supported me. If you're interested in hosting, contact Denise Gaskins, the founder of this here carnival. The January carnival will be at her blog, but I think February is open!

177 is semiprime, for which two primes? 

177 is the ninth Leyland number, of the form x^y+y^x. What are x & y for 177? They're both prime, which should be a special kind of Leyland I think.

177 is the first "non-trivial" 60-gonal number. (1 and 60 are too easy.) What is the next 60-gonal number? (Pictured) What does the sequence of the first non-trivial n-gonal numbers look like? (6, 9, ...)

177 is a Leonardo number, so named by Edsgard Dijkstra for their relation to the Fibonacci numbers. The first five are 1, 1, 3, 5, 9... can you determine the pattern?

But the coolest thing to me is that it's the magic constant of the smallest magic square of distinct primes! I'll get you started...
(Thanks to Jim Olsen who caught a istake in my original!)

Supposedly the 2nd highest dart score is 177 - but I need someone to explain that to me. Supposedly I used to play darts!

177 is getting too big for many interesting images on Google image search. So I tried AI. Give me 177 ants marching! 75 at most. Give me a stack of 177 balls. Hmm... I don't think so. That set me off to GeoGebra to make a visualization tool.

Things are hopping over on Bluesky. Most of these links are from there. Here's a math teacher starter pack, or a mathsky star pack part 1 or part 2 or an #elemmathchat starter pack. Other good tags to check are #mathsky, #iteachmath or #mathstoday. So far it's been positive and energetic.


Gamey

Denise shares a math game every Monday, like Area Block or Coin Chain.

Sara Van Der Werf reshared her amazing 5x5 game, for adding, multiplying and a bit of strategy.

Erick Lee and his son invented a sweet exponents game that I'm dying to try.

Some fine mathematicians seem to have proved that Henry Dudeney's famous equilateral to square dissection is minimal. I made a GeoGebra puzzle out of it to celebrate. That dissection is hinged and Manuel Sada made GeoGebra for that! Denise shared a Dudeney game I had never seen before.

I've really been enjoying the Celtix puzzle by Andrew Taylor. Great UI. Multiple solutions to each, but took me awhile to get the hang of just focusing on one color at a time. Here's two solutions to Puzzle 177. HT Ayliean.

Sarah Carter, queen of math puzzles, shared some winter themed Sudoku puzzles, also available in Christmas flavor.

Catriona Agg continues to invent the sweetest geometry puzzles. This one with four equilateral triangles was really neat.

I've always thought a card sort was an activity that invited play. Marilyn Burns continues to amaze me, like here when she tried her first card sort!

David Flynn shared a puzzle he made for 3rd graders. Get from start to finish using only right angles.




Artsy

Xavier Golden (full relation) found the classic Eames math shorts (plus more) in a single YouTube playlist.

Ben Orlin's math with Bad Drawings is a constant delight, but I especially loved his musings on Edgar Degas and math.

Erick also shared an old Bree Pickford-Murray post making posters for missing hexagons (after first inventing hexagon types).

Min Min shared an old post of Sarah's making slope-keyed nameplates. 

Paula Beardell Krieg has a bunch of upcoming workshops, but still found time to share this open and close pop up.

Grant Snider drew a sweet math fable. (Is it a rhombus, though?)

Sue Van Hattum's super cool Althea series is continuing. Here she shares a problem with a problem.


Teachy


Nat Banting blogged about an essential teaching reminder.

Dan Wekselgreene shared a routine that my preservice secondary teachers tried and liked, Correct, Incorrect, Incomplete.

Jenna Laib writes about students writing silly story problems.

Glenn Waddell did a whole series of quadratics this fall, wrapping up with the mystery of the b coefficient.

Dylan Kane never lost the beat, still the most consistent math teacher writer. Here he's thinking about Ben Orlin's book and Hemingway and Negative Numbers.


Extry

Maybe you're looking for last minute mathy gifts? Thanks, Aperiodical. Who wouldn't want a handmade zine? How you could wrap them from this post.

Ali Almossawi shares some math history about a few great mathematicians who were famously slow.

I didn't get many math comics made this #mathtober  but this was definitely the biggest hit.



That's it for me! See you next year. Coming soon, Xavier's and my math graphic novel, AL, Logical!


What? Are you still here? Then enjoy one of Howie Hua's many riffs on a holiday meme.




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Monday, October 30, 2023

Playful Math Carnival 169

 Do you want to host the 13^2 Playful Math carnival in October? A month that had a Friday the 13th? 

Yes, please. Should have been on 10/13 instead of 10/31 but... apologies.

169 is a palindrome in two number bases less than 16. Which do you suppose?

All odd squares are centered octagonal numbers, but 169 is also a centered hexagonal. (Visualize more with Alex CHIK's GeoGebra.)

It is the smallest square that is prime upside down! What on earth could the next one be? Also 1666666999999999 is prime. What would you call that property? (Both via PrimeCurios.)

It's the last square in the Pell sequence, which are connected to approximations of π. What numerator n makes n/129 an approximation of π?
Puzzling

I'm using tangrams in an elementary math ed course as our primary manipulative to talk geometry, so I maybe have been too on the lookout. Simona Riva has a great GeoGebra collection of activities. Polypad has a great tangram puzzle collection. Here are some I found on a cereal box! But most of all, you have to see Paula Beardell Krieg's amazing series of tangram posts from this summer.

Futility Closet shared a ridiculous Lee Sallows pangeomagic square.

Bakingmoomins made a Hat Hat with the new Einstein tile.

Games

Always on the lookout for games. Tracy Proffitt has an awesome collection, well organized.

Interesting double or halve game from NRICH.

Sarah Carter shared the Ghost Game, fun logic/strategy game.

Sophia Wood and Kate Nowak with a great math game over on Brilliant: Halfsies

Content

Jenna Laib interviewed Kindergartners about zero. Great read!

Steve Phelps is the most amazing teacher with tech I know. He has a geometric constructions Desmos activity.

Eugenia Cheng on NPR addressing "Is math real?"

Mathigon now has an online implementation of Multiply by Heart by Dan Finkel.

NCTM has a new line of kids books on Powerful Mathematicians Who Changed the World.

Karen Campe has a calendar of problems every month, solutions at the end of the month. Here's October.


Humor

Sara VanDerWerf pointed out that SNL did a measurement skit. Warning: actually funny.

Kassia Wedekind shared a McSweeney's post from a teacher about teaching a curriculum with fidelity. Warning: a little too close to reality.

Fashion

Fashion? Libo Valencia has #mathplay t-shirts to go with his cool book.

Mathober

Sophia Wood started #Mathober a few years ago. Art and more on a math theme. Find many posts on Twitter or Mastodon or Bluesky. I've been liking Katie Steckles' Ï€ minute GeoGebra videos.



Last Stop

Last but not least, two playful bits from my students! Corinna, Leah, Jordan, Kacy and Jill made a Spooky Monster Escape Room in Desmos Activities. Ryan, Keri, Alex, Anna, and Emma have a new headbandz inspired math game for grades 5 and up called Math Heads. And by up, we mean up to college math majors!

At the home of the Playful Math Carnival, you can find previous, like 168 at find your factors, or connect to host yourself. I'd highly recommend it! Find the next one, Nov/Dec at the Fairy Math Mother. Should be magical.

This is my stop! Hope you had fun.

P.S. This will get you to go. Ed Southall asked AI to make images of people enjoying math...












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Friday, September 30, 2022

Playful Math Carnival 159

Welcome one and all! Come on in and have a ball. 159 is semiprime and that's just fine.

Lucky that I'm hosting this, or is it just that 159 is lucky. How do you get lucky? Start with the counting numbers. Delete every 2nd number, leaving 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45... odd.  The 2nd number remaining is 3, so delete every 3rd number, leaving 1 3 7 9 13 15 19 21 25 27 31 33 37 39 43 45... now that's interesting in and of itself. Next delete every 7th number, leaving 1 3 7 9 13 15 21 25 27 31 33 37 43 45 ...; now delete every 9th number; etc.  How far do we have to go before we know 159 is lucky? Does knowing 151 is the previous lucky number help? Interesting to look at the gaps in each step, and the cutlist for each step.


Is it rarer to be a semiprime or a number with only odd digits? Odd increasing digits? Linear pattern in its digits?  Alyssa would like it as is.

Pat Bellew's 159 facts are that 159 is the sum of 3 consecutive prime numbers (which?) and can be written as the difference of two squares in two different ways (don't you want to find them?).

He also has that __ __ •159 = __ __ __ __ using all 9 nonzero digits. Of course, you can brute force it, but can you deduce this digitally complete product?



What #playfulmath have you seen this month? Here's some of what I have noticed.

September started with Math on a Stick in full swing. Doesn't get more playful than that!

Katie Steckles and Jimi went over the math in the Spider-Man No Way Home end credits. I lost my mind when watching it in the theatre, and am so glad someone's sharing it. SO MANY MC Escher references.

And as if the visuals weren't sufficient, the song is De La Soul's great cover of the Schoolhouse Rock classic, Three is a Magic Number.

Live human scale Prime Climb at NCTM-LA
photo Liesl McConchie


Is that Howie Hua? (Yes - He and Annie Forest won.)

as yet undiscovered unpentennium
Christine Thielen tweeted about her class' enjoyment of the Mathigon puzzle of the day.

Speaking of puzzle of the day, Michael Pershan wrote about this new Beast Academy (upper elementary and higher) daily arithmetic puzzle, Make Ten. I enjoy his PershMail newsletter each week.

The Erikson Institute is a great source for early math insights, and here they cover four playful number books.

Charlotte Sharpe shared a quick, rich early math game with dice and subitizing cards.

Michael Minas & helpers are back with an inequality game, Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs. 

Australian Math Circles shared this online interactive math game with lots of nice number recognition and sense images.

Libo Valencia tweeted about his class playing this angle game, Daniel Mentrard's Polar Battleship. 

He also shared his daughters catmathart... a perfect transition to the next section.


Zarah Hussain shared her icosahedron statue on public display in London.

Paula Beardell Krieg is always busy with something creative and beautiful. For instance, her Rather Strange Solids. (But while you're there, poke around.)


Sophia Wood does programming, teaching and art. Her latest bird is perched on an unorientable branch...



Sam Hartburn sang to some Ayliean artwork for a recent Clopen Mic Night.

SimonLav with a Marvel-ous Desmos animation.

David Reimann nods to Magritte with this piece, related to his Bridges article.




Last but not least, I'm very happy to be a part of David Coffey's newest project: the Teaching Like Ted Lasso Podcast. Episode 1 is out, and it's on... PLAY! Check the show notes for scoonches of resources on play in math class.


As long as I'm on the pitch... just after this post on this blog are some very fun, well developed math games from my students.

And what's next? #Mathober! Sophia Wood has put together a list of prompts.

Each day there's a theme. Share a bit of math, a doodle, a comic, some art on the theme. Play along one day, or all 31. Tweet or send it to Sophia or myself and we'll share.

Ferarri 159S 



See you next month at Denise Gaskins' place, the founder of this here blog carnival. Info there on how to ask to host. I highly recommend it! So much playful math to celebrate. While you're there, check out her weekly Math Game Monday.

Vroom!


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Saturday, April 30, 2022

Playful Math 155

 Welcome to the Playful Math Carnival, 155th edition!

155, tell us your secrets.


Via Pat Bellew, 155 is the sum of the prime numbers between its smallest and largest prime factors, 5 and 31. 5+7+11+13+17+19+23+29+31=155. How would you go about finding more of these? What would you call them? Pat also notes that 155 is the number of primitive permutation groups of order 81. Which is odd, because it is more than double the number of groups for any order less than 81. And there's not another larger (than 75 even!) until you get to order 256 (which has 244). Do 81 and 256 have anything in common?

Wait, 5 and 31? That means 155 is semiprime. What is the previous and what is the next semiprime? (They're both even...) Are there more primes or semiprimes smaller than 100?

The coolest thing I found is that 155 is a toothpick number. You start with a toothpick, then add a perpendicular toothpick anywhere there is an exposed endpoint. Here is 1, 3, 7, 11, 15, 23, 35, 43, 47, 55, 67. How many more steps to 155? Is it a fractal? Is it a cellular automaton? Mathematicians have also studied T(n)/n^2. Does it have a limit? Does it have an extremum? Here's some GeoGebra to make your own.


155 is also a generalized pentagonal number. The pentagonal numbers have a rule n(3n-1)/2, usually for n =1, 2, 3... , giving 1, 5, 12, 22, 35, ... But there are also positive outputs for negative integers, 2, 7, 15, 26, 40 ... which pleasantly fit between the usual pentagonal numbers. What patterns do you notice? Which negative number gives 155? I've been trying to think about how to visualize these negative pentagonals, to no avail so far. Have you got any ideas?


Maybe the toothpick was a little too crazy of a visual patten? Here's one I was trying to make to have 155. Did it work? If so, which step? Fawn always asks for the 43rd step... what's that? Is there a rule? What if step 1 had -1 square, what would the rule be?




I also found this pattern over at OEIS from Ilya Gutskovskiy. Which step is 155? How would you write the rule? What is a Fibonacci polynomial? From where did that question come?

On to the goodies...

Blogger of the Month
Jenna Laib is killing it. Creator of Slow Reveal Graphs, she has so much good writing on so many different topics, it is amazing. For example, THIS MONTH, planning (with a great pattern/multiplication activity), the Ramadan calendar, learning progressions,  mathematizing children's literature plus part 1 and part 2 examples. In addition, she edits the Illustrative Math blog, where she also sometimes writes gems like this on instructional routines Plus Slow Reveal Graphs, which just this week included How Loud is Too Loud?, Amazon Worker Injuries, and Australian Housing.



Elementary and Middle
Math for Love shared their 40 Face Puzzle. 100% will try, as I've loved the 100 Face activity, too.

Brian Bushart got playing Heads and Tails, a game/probability exploration.

Andrew Fenner made a hundred chart game in KnowledgeHook. (Free account but you have to log in to see it.)

Karen Campe wrote about special number pairs in math. The game I love adapting for these is Go Fish. For example, my preservice teachers were playing 1s Go Fish with some fraction cards they made with 4th and 5th graders. (2 cards each of: ½, ¼, ¾.⅓, ⅔, ⅙,⅚, 1/12, 5/12, 7/12, 11/12, one choice or can make two more different 1/2s, or a 0 and a 1.) I also made these fraction card blanks, but they might be more middle school...

Not this month, but there is a collection of tiny elementary math games here on this blog. Pointed for specific content, but low effort, low materials. As wih the fractions above, I love playing them with student made cards.

Wow. Rajeev Raizada made paper pool in Desmos!




High School and Beyond
Henri Picciotto shared a blogpost from Liz Caffrey using his Lab Gear for algebra. 

Deana Sample shared a fun bodyscale similar triangles activity.

Matt Enlow shared his progress on a crazy problem cutting up spheres to get different surface areas.

Also 3D, Sophia Wood shared her learners' work making nets for some interesting polyhedra in Polypad. (Which lets you fold them! Select all the tiles in the net, and a fold option appears. Select a polyhedron and an unfold option is there.)

Erin and Taylor, two of my seniors, put together a sweet 1 week graph theory unit for high school, which ends with a math game built on some pretty cool discrete ideas.

Mathigon shared their timeline scavenger hunt, using their excellent timeline of math and mathematicians.

Dave Richeson investigates Möbius strips with zippers with his learners.

James Propp applies proof by contradiction constructively in this month's post.

Math Art & Puzzles
Melynee Naegele sent the hexaflexagons from Sarah at Math Equals Love. These are always amazing! Sarah is also the queen of classroom puzzles, so check them out while you're over there.

Margie Pearse collected a bunch of math puzzles for May. (Gdoc)

Via James Propp and Daniel Kline, the Jumping Julia puzzle. 

Speaking of puzzles, Ms. Messineo sent Justin Aion's pride in solving Will M Dunn's puzzle. Feels like some kind of planar Ramsey Theory problem... Keep reading, the #mtbos discussion was pretty cool.

Patrick Vennebush wrote & joked about I Don't Know Puzzles.

Obviously I love using Polypad at Mathigon. Well they're having an art contest! For the under 18 crowd, but I'm planning to go gawk. HT Sophia.

Speaking of art, Paula Beardell Krieg sent Celeste Bancos' Origami Pockets post, which also had some great informal measurement investigation and what if thinking. Paula has been blowing me away with her #mathsartmonday tweets, like this one.

Lee Trent was playing with fractal cats. Fracatals? Not her first...

Speaking of tumblr, this poster described this viral video as stochastic continuous nim. Spot on.



Tik Tok?
Howie Hua is the king of math TikTok. Check out gems like his mixture puzzle.

The undisputed master of math tech, Steve Phelps is there.

Ms. Callahan is the funny math teacher.

Math Letters is shooting for a Math with Bad Drawings vibe for TikTok. 

But there must be more! Help us find them...

Off Ramp
Karen Campe reminded me to promote Ben Orlin's new math game book, the epitome of playful math. I am loving it. Somehow it's even better than I expected. Karen also pointed out a pretty sweet hexagon tessellation at La Guardia of all places, so you know she has an eye for fun.

The previous Playful Math Carnival was at Denise Gaskins' blog, the founder of the carnival. Be sure to check her site weekly for the Math Game Mondays which are only up one week! Other goodies, too, though. Next up is at Nature Study Australia.  Contact Denise if you're interested or willing to host. It really impresses me every time I do just how much good stuff is out there.







PS. I've been working all year with Xavier Golden (yes relation) a preservice art teacher on a math graphic novel. And we're starting to see some inked and colored pages... I'm so excited!







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Thursday, December 30, 2021

Playful Math Education 151

Welcome to the 151st edition of Denise Gaskin's Playful Math Education Carnival for November/December 2021. That's a lot of good math that has been shared, but I'll try to narrow it down. Thanks especially to Iva Sallay and Denise herself who had good suggestions for links.

It's always nice to have a prime edition! It's in a string of 4 primes separated by 12... does that happen very often? It's also the start of a string of four sexy primes... what number separates those? It's an older sibling twin prime, and a part of a string of quadratic form primes (not sure why those are of interest). It's a lucky number by Euler's count, and it turns out those share some asymptotic properties with the primes. It's a palindrome, and a natural ambigram in some fonts... so maybe a pambidrome? I think there's one more pambidrome prime before 200, but what's the first one after 200? It's the number of partitions of 17 into an odd number of parts. 17, [1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1]... and 149 others.  (Image made in Polypad, which has new features to play with each month, seemingly.)

Lagrange's theorem tells us that each positive integer can be written as a sum of four squares. But some of them can not be written as the sum of less than 4 squares, and 151 is like that. What are the four squares?

Make

To get things started, maybe give Steve Phelp's fractal snowflake maker a try. If paper is your thing, try Paula Beardell Krieg's directions.

Paula also had a great post reviewing her month of making Johnson Solids. She's been doing Saturday half hour folding sessions that are the epitome of playful math making.

Jenna Laib shared a tweet thread about a quick drawing game that got kids thinking. Update: she wrote a blog post about it!

Can't have one of these without a Simon Gregg post. Here his learners are building Number Blocks, a show he's already converted me to.

Vincent Pantaloni shared a Set game (a Set set?) with just geometric symbols. I think it could be really challenging.

Just shortly before publishing, Jonathan pushed send on a post about haikus and magic from having a typewriter in his classroom. My favorite was this, which he admitted was his own! I shared that in grad school we loved numbers that could be haiku, like 32,518,460. He added two more on Twitter:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. That's enough.

2.71 8281828 45 and so on

Play, Game & Puzzle

Back from May, but spot on theme, Peter Rowlett writes about Math Play with Young Children.

Annie Forest shared a place value, low materials math game called Draw 10 that she first wrote about a few years ago.

Adrienne Burns tweets about making a math Bingo game better, for addition and representation.

Michael Minas and family share multiple games a month on YouTube. Mostly number and operations. If I had to pick one from Nov/Dec, it would be Strawberry vs Dinosaur, a sweet little numberline game (named after their counters).

Jenna Laib, who would be my nominee for blogger of the year, despite some stout competition, shared her all purpose number boxes game in May, as a part of her high leverage games collection. Mark Chubb wrote a post about how he plays it, with multiple different operations and a units of measurement context.

James Cleveland Tran tweeted an integral calculus version of one of my favorite simple but high leverage games.

There were 151 original, or Kanto, Pokemon. (Mew is 151) I'm a big believer that strategy games of any type help develop problem solving, and sometimes number sense. Collectible card games add a lot to that, with deck construction and variety of situations adding more problem solving. 

They also raise a lot of mathematical questions, such as the one Howie Hua is solving here for Magic the Gathering. Howie's TikTok is full of amazing nuggets, strategies and math.

There was a fun Global Math Department meeting about Beast Academy Playground games, and Erick Lee shared some of his favorites. Troll hole is one I love to share on a whiteboard or paper if there's an opportunity.

Celeste Bancos revisited the Secret Number Game.

Pam's addressing that you can learn math through play in homeschool, too.

Iva Sallay crosses Sarah Carter and Joseph Nebus and makes a puzzle!

Colleen Young connects to a bunch of math puzzle resources.

Patrick Vennebush is working out a better multiple choice test in his Mathy Jokes blog.

Content

Bumba Stories has a short history of why we have 12 months.

The Quiet Pond has a review of what looks like a good picture book, Danny Chung Sums It Up. 

Christopher Danielson share's one perfect page from The Last Marshmallow.

Speaking of counting, Early Math Counts has some early math winter counting opportunities.

Dave Taylor started a Twitter thread about historical numerals by starting with the Cistercian numbers.

Brian Bushart shared one of his favorite resources, a free collection of math interventions, Pirate Math Equation Quest. It is not all pirate themed, but lots of great supporting materials.

One-Fifty-One is a hard rock band... not my taste, but if it's yours, rock on.

Jenna Laib had a great geometry post about the half triangle. If you listen closely, you can hear the learners progressing van Hiele levels.

If you're looking to stretch your brain, try Jim Propp's monthly essay, this time on numbers from games. Bonus John Conway stories.

Katie Steckles wrote a sweet piece for the Aperiodical about  Spirograph Math.

I should be blogging more... and if I did, I would definitely write about the interesting responses to this tweet about dividing polynomials with partial quotients. 



Teaching

Dylan Kane, always challenging, provocative and brief, takes on productive struggle.

David Sladkey wrote about implementing some of the Thinking Classroom ideas with his learners. Practical and productive.

Margie Pearse wrote a post for Heinemann on using literature to address social justice in math.

Dan Finkel's reflecting on a big question "Am I a Mathematician?"

In Memoriam

We'll close with Math Ed Podcast's interview of Dr. Liz Fennema, one of the founders of  Cognitively Guided Instruction. She passed away this month in hospice. She received the NCTM lifetime achievement award this year, at least partially in response to a public campaign. CGI might not be playful in the same way as many of the resources shared here, but with their focus on improving learning for children, and listening to children's inherently playful approach to mathematical problem solving, they moved all of us forward. She also did significant work on gender in math education. Rest in peace, Dr. Fennema.


If you are interested in hosting this carnival, I highly recommend giving it a try. A little work, and a lot of fun. Contact Denise on Twitter or via the Playful Math Education Carnival homepage. Denise is hosting January, but then there are lots of opportunities ahead. Ask me and I'll happily add some suggestions for posts!

Cheers to a mathy new year! I know champagne is more typical, but where's the 151 in that?






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