Making Math Meaningful and Fun!
With Activities and Alternative Curriculum Resources
Even if you’re not good at math (like me), you can inspire your kids to explore this subject with delight. Here are a few tips:
Play games that use math, and be playful with math.
Use math as it relates to where you live and what you do.
Connect math to your children’s interests.
Encourage explorations and self-designed projects that use math.
Math for my kids was fun, hands-on, not just about computing digits on paper. If I had learned math this way, I’m convinced I would have enjoyed it, and become far more mathematically literate. This was math with a purpose!
Here are some things that my kids did.
PreK
We played lots of games using dice, cards and manipulatives (things you can touch and hold). We counted and sorted coins, pebbles, colored counters, and more.
When walking or taking the bus, we counted coffee shops and pizzerias (learning reading by spotting double letters), and made a bar graph at home, counting them up to see which number was greater both visually and numerically.
Elementary Grades
My older son turned math practice into cartoons. Drawing two hands on a clock face, he added a third as the second hand, and a head, arms and legs, with a dialogue bubble that showed the clock saying, “I have five hands!” We made up silly math riddles and jokes.
We played “Stump Mom.” They’d create a math problem and give it to me; but they had to know the answer first because, as I told them, I’m bad at math so they had to know if I was right! My son’s first problem for me was something like 10,000,000 minus 9,999,999, and they became more complicated.
I showed them how I comparison shopped at grocery stores, and they did the same at toy stores. Telling us where we could get a toy for less always made us laugh! Then we’d suggest saving their allowance or birthday money. We suggested they split their own money three ways: 1) savings, 2) spending, 3) charity. They each chose a charity they could relate to and donated something.
They sold lemonade and used books on a brownstone stoop on the upper west side, computing expenses and profit.
They learned statistics about their favorite animals and asked math and science questions that let to math explorations.
Middle and High School
Each kid planned an invention that began with a list of materials and a budget.
My whale-loving son used migration distances, as well as odds & probability, to create a whale board game. In his teens, he worked as a marine biology intern, collecting and analyzing data on site. My theater-loving son made historical costumes, cutting homemade patterns. He designed complicated masks and built set designs to scale using metric measurement. They played chess together.
We used the New York Times to examine charts and graphs that related to current events, and to read about math in economics, science, the arts and modern trends.
Getting Help
Both of my kids looked forward to learning higher levels of math. By the time they were in high school, a tutor was guiding them towards mathematical literacy, a level of understanding that I lacked. The tutor taught them advanced ways of mental computation and estimation. She used a wide variety of resources, traditional and Regents-based, as well as individualized, interest-based. If you need a referral to a tutor, contact me with your request.
Resources and suggestions for games, interest-based math activities, and alternative curriculum resources.
(Activities and resources are listed youngest to oldest.)
Math Games
Math For Love offers free games and lessons for preK-12, as well as award-winning games for sale, including Tiny Polka Dot for ages 3-8 and Prime Climb for ages 10+. They also sell shape blocks (similar to tangram pieces, below). Created by a math teacher who wanted his students to think and discover.
Asumudi: A Game of Creative Mental Math, for ages 8-12, with variations of the game for younger and older age groups.
Hands-On Algebra: Ready-To-Use Games & Activities for Grades 7-12 by Frances McBroom Thompson
Chroma Cube Logic Game Puzzle, with easy to difficult levels, for ages 8 to adult.
Tangram Puzzle Wooden Geometry Game, with variations. Brainteaser puzzles that come with the game are recommended for ages 13+, but the pieces can be played with by younger children.
Tangram pieces you can print and cut out for free, from Math Equals Love (scroll to bottom for link).
Math jokes from Prodigy. Make up your own!
More resources for math games in Books, and Related Articles, listed below.
Interdisciplinary Math Activities
Choose an Interest-Based Focus
ART (also known as STEAM)
Make Tangram Pieces for puzzle fun and art creations, for all ages. Here’s a free tangram template to print out from Math Equals Love (use card stock for more durable pieces). There are also suggestions for how to use tangram pieces. You can also purchase a set of tangram pieces.
Learn to recognize math in art, from YouCubed, for K-12. More STEAM activities can be found in video lessons from YouCubed.
Learn to draw in perspective and to recognize perspective in great paintings. Free lesson plan in “Linear One-Point Perspective” from the Metropolitan Museum of Art publication available for free download, The Art of Renaissance Europe: A Resource for Educators, pages 135-138. Draw a room in one-point perspective, free pdf lesson from the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas. Lesson plans from the Georgia Museum of Art include Drawing in Linear Perspective (the last lesson and worksheet in this free pdf).
Learn to draw the human body using the mathematical proportions discovered by Leonardo Da Vinci and shown in his work of art Vitruvian Man. Leonardo da Vinci for Kids: His Life and Ideas, 21 Activities by Janis Herbert, contains an activity on page 35, where you measure parts of your body, similar to the way da Vinci measured the human body. Is the head one eights of the person’s height? Is the ear as long as the nose? Is the forearm (to the elbow) one court of the body’s height? These questions and more are listed in this activity. You can also find da Vinci’s proportional body measurements here and here, in individual lesson plans. I suggest standing in front a mirror with a ruler and yardstick or measuring tape to see if da Vinci was right, and to try and draw a face and body so it looks in proportion. Is your body eight heads tall?
Free downloadable hands-on STEAM Activities for kids, from AIMS Center (Maker-Based Learning).
Online Webinars for Educators from AIMS - learn how to make a STEAM activity you can do with your kids or students.
STEAM Lesson Plans from Inventionland Education for elementary, middle and high school, including the Marshmallow Tower and the Three Little Pigs Design Challenge.
Science (STEAM and STEM)
Gardening, outdoors or indoors or even making sprouts on the kitchen windowsill. This Kids’ Gardening Lesson Plan has easy steps. Do one or more of the following activities. Record measurements: seed, plant food, water, as well as height or length of plant or sprout as they grow, and record the time the plants take to grow to a certain length or height. Keep a visual records with drawings or photos or even a comic book. Make a timeline.
Rock collecting data: hardness scale, weight, karats, and physical measurements such as height and width. Compare data to other rocks. Here are 10 Reasons Why Your Child’s Rock Collection is Important. These articles from Early Math Counts show examples of young children learning math with rocks, and Rocking through Early Learning Standards.
Participate in the annual backyard bird count in February. Here are more resources for the Great Backyard Bird Count. Learn about birds, such as how fast a hummingbird flies and how often they eat, or how far certain birds migrate. Bird Lessons and Activities for K-12 from the Cornell Lab have a search bar where you can ask any bird question!
Make a weather station in your home, on a porch, balcony or in a backyard. Record the data on a graph or timeline. Here are tips from Inventors of Tomorrow on how to make a weather station for kids; a list from National Geographic Kids of instruments you’ll need for a weather station, and how to make some of those instruments from Playful Sprout. You can also buy the instruments, but making them from scratch provides a richer learning experience.
Social Studies & History
Plan and budget a day trip or family vacation, including costs, travel time and distance. Choose places to visit and activities in your destination, such as visiting the Louvre and walking along the Seine in Paris. Research how you would have made the same journey a hundred years ago (or choose any number of years), and compare cost, time and distance, as well as places you might have visited and activities you might have done.
Research statistics that occur over a period of time on any focused topic and explore the reasons behind the statistics and changes. This can be a simple project for young learners, such as how a certain park changed over the previous generation, to an advanced project for middle and high school such as comparing neighborhoods.
To compare neighborhoods, research statistics such as: population, the number of stores nothing types and sizes, the number of educational and cultural institutions noting types and sizes, (additional categories such as places of worship, bars, and restaurants can be added), amount and condition of of trees and parks, outdoor temperature taking on the hottest and coldest days, and another other statistics you can think of. Explore the history and significance of the differences. Why are neighborhoods different and how did they get that way?
Language Arts
Read books and watch movies with math, and discuss them. Here are some favorite picks (see Alternative Math Curriculum Resources for more). (Links are for browsing. Check your local library first, or buy used!)
Elementary grades
The Numberlys by William Joyce for ages 3-7.
How Big is a Foot? by Rolf Myller, for ages 5-8.
The Rajah’s Rice: A Mathematical Folktale from India by David Barry, for ages 7-9.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, for ages 8 and up.
Hidden Figures (Young Reader’s Edition) by Margot Lee Shetterly (described below), for ages 8-12 (adult version available for teens).
Numbers in Motion: Sophie Kowalevski, Queen of Mathematics by Laurie Wallmark, picture book biography for ages 8-12.
Middle and High School
The Man Who Counted: A Collection of Mathematical Adventures by Malba Tahan, math fantasy puzzles for ages 10 to adult.
Six Triple Eight by Mary McCallum (described below), for ages 13 and up.
Sophie’s Diary: A Mathematical Novel by Dora Musielak, inspiring true story of a female mathematician in the 18th century, for teens and adults.
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel, for teens and adults.
Movies
Donald in Mathemagic Land, animated film for pre-K and family viewing.
WALL-E, animated family film where problems are often solved with mathematical reasoning.
Underwater Dreams, inspiring film about a high school robotics team, for age 10+.
Hidden Figures, true story of three female mathematicians and scientists who worked at NASA (also a novel), for age 10+.
The Six Triple Eight, true story about a female army corps of color in WWII that took on an “impossible” job. Much depended on their understanding the numbers and scale of the situation. For age 12+.
MoneyBall, true story, a baseball drama of how analytics changed the game, for age 13+.
Write a poem or short story using math or numbers. Suggested short writing projects:
a homemade mother’s or father’s day card (or birthday card) using dates and numbers;
a travel budget and itinerary for a trip to a real or fictional place (perhaps a place you read about in a book);
a nonsense poem using humor and numbers;
a silly counting book or math book for young children.
Curriculum Resources
Lists below start with material for younger ages and proceed to older ages. Curriculum is secular.
Alternative Math Curricula
How to Learn Math, free online course from Stanford University’s Education Dept., six short lessons with videos, applicable to all ages.
YouCubed at Home, free visual math video lessons from Stanford University’s Dept. of Education, for grades K-12.
Montessori math videos on Youtube.
When I was searching for manipulative kits, I found them at Hand2Mind, which sells to classroom teachers as well as homeschooling parents. Here’s an example of a hands-on at-home math kit for grade two, and an at-home kit with math manipulatives for grade 5. You can create your own activities at home using coins, pebbles, stickers, rulers, etc.
Lots of parents say their kids enjoy Beast Academy, online math curriculum for ages 6-13. You can choose from self-paced instruction, live classes, and comic-style books.
Borenson's Hands-On Equations is a visual, hands-on introduction to algebra appropriate for age 8 and up, highly recommended..
Wild Math (from Wild Learning) takes math outdoors, with hands-on math curricula for grades K-5.
Jump Math for K-8, math curriculum developed by a Canadian mathematician and playwright.
Life of Fred is a math curriculum for grades 1-12 and beyond, using fictional chapter books and humor. Click on any level of math in the sidebar, and then click on any lesson, to find a free sample lesson for that level (on the right side of the page).
Family Math by Jean Stenmark, with games and hands-on activities for K-8.
MathAntics with free, entertaining math videos on YouTube for grades 3-8, from numeracy to algebra.
Janice Van Cleave’s Math for Every Kid: Easy Activities That Make Learning Math Fun, for ages 7-12.
Janice Van Cleave’s Geometry for Every Kid, for ages 7-12.
Rethinking Math: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers, from RethinkingSchools, middle school math curriculum with social justice.
Jamie York Math Academy, Making Math Meaningful Curriculum, taking a Waldorf approach to math for grades 5-12. You can watch free YouTube videos from Jamie York Academy in math and science.
Online Resources with In-Person Events in NYC
Math-M-Addicts, a talent-search program for talented math students, offers free classes on Saturdays to low-income families in NYC. Classes are online, Saturdays from 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm, with 2 to 4 hours of homework per week, from mid-September until June. They also offer advanced in-person math classes for middle and high school students, as well as Olympiad classes. They also have a Girl’s Math Competition for grades 3-8.
MoMath Math Museum has hands-on math exhibits and events for all ages. Online events with hands-on math activities are available for all ages, young children to seniors.
Math Curricula Online and in Print
Prodigy Game, standards aligned, K-8.
Thinkwell, online video math program for homeschoolers grades 6-12, includes AP and honors level courses.
Free from Stanford's Graduate School of Education, How to Learn Math in six short lessons. Share this with teens who think they’re not good at math!
Calculus For and By Young People: Worksheets by Don Cohen “The Mathman”, free on his website along with additional documents and videos, recommended for grades 5 and up.
Challenge Math by Edward Zaccaro, for gifted and advanced students K-12, including 10 Things All Future Mathematicians And Scientists Must Know: But Are Rarely taught, for grades 4-12, from Hickory Grove Press.
Kahn Academy - free online math videos for preK-college.
Mathematics: A Human Endeavor: A Textbook for Those Who Think They Don’t Like the Subject, by Harold Jacobs, for middle and high school students.
MIT Open Courseware Search Engine, with free courses in math and science for high school students. Search for high school or noncredit courses, and add the topic.
A more complete list of math resources, books and videos is
available for download on the Resources Page.
Related Articles
The Take Out Curriculum, a language arts lesson for K-1 incudes the making of a bar graph.
How to Teach Multiplication and Division using Lego Bricks, from Math Geek Mama.
Make a polygon alphabet, a hands-on geometry activity that includes art and imagination, for grades 4-8.
And ’Rithmetic by Daniel Greenberg, a teacher at Sudbury School recounts his experience teaching K-6 math in a single year.
A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart, and essay lamenting how math is taught.
The Teaching of Arithmetic: The Story of An Experiment, essays in three parts by an educator and superintendent of schools.
Peter Gray’s article in Psychology Today about The Teaching of Arithmetic: The Story of an Experiment: “When Less Is More: The Case for Teaching Less Math in School.”