Virtual manipulatives, unit chats, how mathematicians found primes in the past, paying kids to do math homework???

Hi — and welcome to the July edition of math tips:

Math Mammoth news
Virtual manipulatives and tools
Unit chats
Paying kids to do their math homework
Why prime numbers still fascinate mathematicians

Also... stay tuned to hear about upcoming SALES! Homeschool Buyers Co-op will run a FLASH sale in July, and a group buy in August. I will run a sale at MathMammoth.com also, in the latter part of August.

1. Math Mammoth news

Homeschool Buyers Co-op will run a 40% off FLASH SALE from 7/10 to 7/17 for the large Math Mammoth bundles.

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Math Mammoth Grade 4 Skills Review Workbook is now available (digital version)!

This workbook is supplemental, and provides additional practice for the topics in the main curriculum (Light Blue Series).

Grade 5 book is coming soon — in August!

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Testimonial

It is heart-warming to hear success stories from customers, and this one is kind of neat also because the girl loves Mathy. To me, it's wonderful when Mathy can have a positive effect... just a simple stuffed animal! This girl is not the only one... I've heard similar things before, and there are even reviews on Amazon attesting to that same effect.

I just have to tell you what a wonderful year we've had with Math Mammoth! We are about 2 weeks out from finishing grade 1, and my daughter & I are both excited about moving on to grade 2. We switched in November (at that time, you gave me some placement advice... thank you!), and since then, my daughter has become quite the lover of math! Before MM, we were using Christian Light Education, and she would whine and cry almost daily when it came time for math. She knew the material, but it was pure drudgery for her.

Now, thanks to you & Mathy (we had to get our own Mathy!), she even asks if we can do math first each day! It's clicking with her, and she is so proud when she's able to quickly answer a problem mentally. We love the lesson plans for Homeschool Planet, and each day, she's excited to see if we have a video or game to go along with our lesson.

I truly can't thank you enough. Math Mammoth has made such a difference in our homeschool.

Sincerely, Libby P

2. Virtual manipulatives and tools

MathPlayground.com has a neat collection of online tools and manipulatives.

This includes interactive tools for BAR MODELS (Singapore math style but they're present in Math Mammoth too) that students can use to solve word problems.

Take a look:

3. Unit chats

How many do you see?

All you need is just a few minutes. Ask your child/student, "How many?" — and you can have a rich mathematical discussion. So simple and non-intimidating, yet you can find some neat math in these images. :)

=> Unit chats from Math for Love

4. Paying kids to do their math homework

I must admit, this was interesting.

I fully realize that we don't necessarily want to get started with payments for homework... because where will we end up? Children who won't do any school work without being paid? That's just not an option.

But I can also see the speaker's point of view: how to get kids more interested in math, when they don't YET see its beauty and inter-connectedness... because once they learn a bit more math, they can see how fascinating math can be, and then that alone can suffice for motivation.

His other concern is, how to get more needed workers for all the fields that require some math knowledge? I wonder if some day we will have technology companies teaching math to their novice workers (with pay) who didn't learn it in school.

His results are preliminary, but overall, at least in the short term, his approach seemed to work. Came to mind, he might end up proving that just about ANY student CAN indeed learn math....!

5. Why prime numbers still fascinate mathematicians, 2,300 years later

Show your children what mathematicians used (just a few hundred years ago) in order to find PRIME NUMBERS... stencils! 😮

Seems so antiquated now in the modern computer age. I've noticed several times how my kids don't even realize how things were done before the age of all these devices we have now, and Google as the ubiquitous "ask-me-anything" service. They don't even recognize images of "ancient" devices like a land-line telephone ☎️ or a record player.

I can remember in the 1980s how every few years, there would be some new gadget/invention that was the "hottest" thing to get, and my dad would contemplate a while before buying one, carefully trying to choose a quality brand, etc. We'd get a VCR... a microwave oven... a CD player... Finally, when I was already in university, sometime in the 1990s, I bought for myself my first COMPUTER. I still remember the fascination and joy I felt of actually owning one!

Check out this article about some mathematicians' work concerning prime numbers in the past (AND in the present!)

Thanks for reading!

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Till next time,
Maria Miller

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