
Super Fun Math Games for Kids
Description
Math is the foundation of all sciences and key to understanding the world around us. Based on the best-selling Math Games Lab for Kids, Super Fun Math Games for Kids engages kids with exciting projects that build these critical math skills. They will have a blast:
- Exploring geometry and topology by making prisms, antiprisms, Platonic solids, and Möbius strips.
- Building logic skills by playing and strategizing through tangrams, toothpick puzzles, and the game of Nim.
- Drawing and charting graphs to learn the language of connections.
- Discovering how to color maps like a mathematician by using the fewest colors possible.
- Creating mind bending fractals with straight lines and repeat shapes.
Each lab contains a complete materials list, clear step-by-step photographs of the process, as well as finished samples. The labs can be used as singular projects or as part of a yearlong curriculum of experiential learning. The activities are open-ended, designed to be explored over and over, often with different results. Geared toward being taught or guided by adults, they are enriching for a range of ages and skill levels.
Everything you need to complete the activities can be found in the book or around the house. Learn to think like a mathematician—see how much you’ll discover!
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Persons
Rebecca Rapoport holds degrees in mathematics from Harvard University and Michigan State. From her first job out of college, as one of the pioneers of Harvard’s Internet education offerings, she has been passionate about encouraging her love for math in others. As an early contributor to both retail giant Amazon.com and Akamai Technologies, the number one firm in cloud computing, Rapoport played a key role in several elements of the Internet revolution. She then returned to her first love, education, as an innovator of new methods to introduce children and adults to the critically important world of STEAM education as COO of an enrichment center dedicated to helping kids explore the creative side of science, technology, engineering, art, and math, and is currently developing and teaching innovative math curricula in the Boston area. Rapoport is also the co-author of Math Games Lab for Kids (published by Quarry Books), a book of fun, hands-on math activities designed to introduce elementary and middle-school students to several areas of higher math; and the calendars Mathematics: Your Daily Epsilon of Math 2021, Mathematics: Your Daily Epsilon of Math 2020, Mathematics 2019: Your Daily Epsilon of Math, and The Mathematics Calendar 2018, all published by Rock Point. She has an Erdös number of 2.
J.A. Yoder is an educator and engineer who has a lifetime love of puzzles and patterns. Her educational philosophy is that hands-on creative work is both the most fun and the most effective way to learn. She developed and taught the original hands-on-math lessons for an after-school program that eventually inspired this book. Some of her happiest memories come from "eureka moments"—either from learning something that makes a dozen other things suddenly make sense, or the sense of accomplishment that comes from solving a clever puzzle. The only thing better is sharing this joy with others.
Content
Introduction
How to Use This Book
GEOMETRY: LEARN ABOUT SHAPES
Prisms and pyramids and Platonic solids, oh my!
Lab 1: Prisms
Lab 2: Pyramids
Lab 3: Antiprisms
Lab 4: Platonic Solids
Lab 5: Perfect Circles
Lab 6: Try a Triangle
Lab 7: Exact Ellipses
Lab 8: Draw Giant Circles and Ellipses
TOPOLOGY: MIND-BENDING SHAPES
Learn about squeezable, squishable shapes and surfaces
Lab 9: Compare and Classify Shapes
Lab 10: Möbius Strips
Lab 11: Möbius Surprise
COLOR MAPS LIKE A MATHEMATICIAN
Using the fewest number of colors possible, fill in a map so adjacent shapes are different
Lab 12: Map Coloring Basics
Lab 13: Efficient Map Coloring
Lab 14: Squiggle Maps
STITCHING CURVES
Learn to create curves using only straight lines
Lab 15: Drawing Parabolas
Lab 16: Stitching Stars
Lab 17: Creative Curves
FANTASTIC FRACTALS
A fractal is a shape that is similar to itself no matter how far you zoom in on one particular part
Lab 18: Draw a Sierpinski Triangle
Lab 19: Build a Sierpinski Triangle
Lab 20: Draw a Koch Snowflake
Lab 21: Draw a Square Fractal Snowflake
Lab 22: Explore the Koch Snowflake’s Perimeter
TERRIFIC TANGRAMS
Solve ancient Chinese puzzles by making different shapes from the same seven pieces
Lab 23: Tangram Basics
Lab 24: Teaser Tangrams
Lab 25: Tougher Tangrams
TOOTHPICK PUZZLES
Create and solve brainteasers using patterns of toothpicks
Lab 26: Starter Toothpick Puzzles
Lab 27: Toothpick Puzzles: The Next Level
GRAPH THEORY
Explore how points and edges are interconnected
Lab 28: Eulerian Circuits
Lab 29: Secrets of Eulerian Circuits Revealed
Lab 30: Bridges of Königsberg
Lab 31: The Euler Characteristic
Lab 32: A Proof About the Euler Characteristic
Pull-Outs
Hints and Solutions
About the Authors
Resources
Index