Maria's Math News, October 2017

Hello! This is the 111th edition of my newsletter... it's been over 10 years and still going strong!

In this edition:
  1. Math Mammoth news
  2. Looking back: Ten years ago (grades 2,7-12)
  3. Math card games (grades 1-7)
  4. Favorite numbers
  5. An interactive music website
  6. In case you missed it...

1. Math Mammoth news

  • I will run a short sale from October 6 through October 13. Use coupon code OCTSALE at my site to get 20% off of all the downloads/CDs.
  • A testimonial... Allisha's son is studying 4th grade.
    I just wanted to tell you that I just moved my son from Horizons math to your Math Mammoth. Mostly because I wanted a mastery type curriculum and yours was highly rated and also suggested by Math Without Borders. He is doing so well with it and it's hard to believe that just after a few weeks his mental math has improved incredibly. He loves the workbook and the games are excellent and has been a great motivator for him. Engineering is in his future so I wanted to hit math hard this year to prepare him for Math without Borders. Thank you so much for all of your emails and care taken with your curriculum. He will be getting a mammoth stuffed animal for Christmas!!

    Regards
    A happy homeschooling mom (Allisha)
  • Someone was asking if I had review sheets available for the Math Mammoth books, with all the explanations and no exercises.

    No, I don't... but I suggested that the children could make a review sheet or a "cheat sheet" themselves. When the student makes one himself/herself, it will help them remember the material much better! They could even make a poster or something similar. When I was in high school, we were sometimes allowed such a cheat sheet in a test. It definitely worked that way... that making the cheat sheet caused you to learn the stuff, and you didn't need it in the test, even though you had it!

2. Looking back: Ten years ago

In my newsletter 10 years ago...

3. Math card games

Pep up your math time with a quick card game from Acing Math — a large collection of math card games.

Recently we've played "Multiplication Zone" from that book (p. 30) a few times, except we changed it so that an ace is 14 (instead of 11) and the rest of the face cards keep their usual numbers.

It's a very nice game in that it doesn't just practice multiplication of two numbers, but instead, players need to consider which cards (numbers) they put together to multiply in order to get a product that's in a certain "zone".

The book has dozens of games, ranging from addition to integers and exponents.

4. Favorite numbers

Math Hombre conducted an unofficial favorite numbers poll... the results are interesting! If you cannot wait to read the article, Pi is the winner!

Some pointers:
  • Phi is the golden ratio, a mathematically important constant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio)
  • The number e is extremely important mathematically and ties in with exponential growth. In fact, of their list, e is my favorite!
  • In case you don't know know why 42 made the top ten... it comes from the book Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy and in that book it is made to be the "answer to the universe and everything" (a joke).

Check out the complete list here.

5. An interactive music website


I was just so delighted with this interactive site that I want to post it here even though it's not math...

My son (7) was really fascinated by the experience... conducting an orchestra interactively online. You get points when you do really well.

You can also compose music (and learn music theory at the same time), try different instruments, or just listen. This is just an amazing time to live in, considering the technological advances!

6. In case you missed it...

Check out The tower of Babel and the division of languages there.






Thanks for reading! :)

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Till next time,
Maria Miller
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