Math Activity Book

Sorry I did not get back to you the first time. I love the book! I am always looking for hands on, fun ways to teach math. I found them easy to modify also. I was able to make them fit third grade. I would love to be notified of any other books you publish. I am at home, so when I get to work I will look at it again to refresh my memory as to what I did this year. Thanks for the ideas.

So far I have only had the chance to use one activity, the Tower of Squares. I used it with my fourth graders and they could really see why some numbers are called "square numbers." It brought up the question of other kinds of numbers, so we are investigating triangular numbers now.

The book looks great. I anticipate using many of the activities next year as I take on the role of math coach at my school and will be working with more primary grades. The pictorial representation is so important and I believe that the students and teachers will appreciate these creative extensions.

I've now done three of the activites in your book, and my colleague did one as well. We both teach 3rd grade in California. I did the clock for my after school intervention group and they enjoyed being able to make a clock. I extended what you had to offer some of the terms "half past" "quarter past" and "quarter to" on their clocks so they could be reminded which was which. It was very simple and easy to do.

My colleague and I both did the perimeter project. Both our classes enjoyed doing it and we each had 1 or 2 students who had an "a-ha" moment in realizing the difference between perimeter and area. (we extended the lesson to included area as that was a point of confusion for some of our students).

I did the perpendicular lines and parallel lines project. This was very difficult for my students, even using contrasting colors, to really make parallel lines with their rulers and then perpendicular lines (with right angles). If I'm able to use this again next year, I will have to attempt it in a different manner as many of kids completed the project but it didn't seem to provide any further clarification; only frustration in their design not looking like the example.

I am a HUGE advocate for using art to enhance and support standards so your book really caught my eye and I think you've done a good job in coming up with some excellent projects.

Please keep me posted on any further projects you may come up with!

I love the book. I bought it for the volume figurines. The third grade teachers at my school teach a unit on cities. I showed it to them so that we could do a volume lesson and construct miniature cities simultaneously.

I am very happy with your book. The lessons and support materials are organized and are very user friendly. Because of the hands-on nature of the activities, I found that they really showed me where my students were in their understanding of various concepts. For example, my students knew how to divide but had to really think about the representations in the division lesson. The lesson lead to some good mathematics discussions.

I have finally had an opportunity to have a really good look at your book. There are some fantastic ideas in there!

May I make a suggestion? It may already be something that you do as a teacher yourself, but I teach fractions before I teach time, basically because in order to understand the concept of quarter past, quarter too and half past I find they need to understand fractions first.

Did a similar activity to your clock activity, but in relation to fractions, but related it to fractions i.e. 1 minute is 1/60th of an hour, 1 minute on an analogue clock can be seen as 1/60th of the circle. See a copy of a work sample attached. The next part to this activity is to use a marker or coloured pencil to go over every 5 lines to indicate the five minute increments and then using a different colour, every 15 lines indicating a 15 minute increment to demonstrate quarter past, half past and quarter to. The students have been extremely excited about the project, some of their comments so far have been awesome! wicked! wow! It looks like a vortex! I haven't yet explained to them the next stages of the project, but what they got out of it was a really visual understanding of minutes on an analogue clock.

Our school has a curriculum map for Maths and English which we are expected of course to follow, however, I broke from that as fractions was meant to be taught after time. When I explained to my colleagues my reasoning, they loved the idea and said that they would do that in future too.

I love your activity on teaching area, it expands on something I have been doing and I think helps to demonstrate the concept of area very well. It works beautifully with your activity on teaching perimeter and I will definitely be using these two activities in my class!

Keep up the good work, you have a great resource there!

I am so thrilled to find a book that matches the way I like to teach. You have made my job easier...you have done all the hard work! This past year I put together about 15 hands on activities for my students (different than yours). Whew! It is harder than it looks. My students are "at-risk" 6th graders and most of your activities will introduce concepts at their level. Hard to imagine students that do not know how to use a ruler or even cut with scissors...but that is what challenges face me every school day.

I liked your book. The activities are good for conceptual development and they are fun and child friendly.

The book is great for helping elementary age kids learn math concepts while working with their hands doing art-like activities. Kids can understand math ideas because they are activating another modality...the visual and the kinesthetic. If students are asked to explain what is going on in their creation, it will add the auditory modality as well.

These lessons lend themselves well to summer programs, after school tutoring sessions, as well as classroom math periods. Most of the troublesome concepts such as fractions, money, time, decimals etc. are included.

This is a good addition to any elementary teacher's math bag of tricks.