Do you strew maths resources for your kids? I used to. I offered books, games, links to websites, and videos because I was legally required to offer maths learning opportunities to my children, and they protested when I presented them with traditional workbooks. They even rejected attractive online interactive maths programs. So, I hunted for other ways to introduce my girls to all the math concepts the education department expected them to learn.
I had another reason for strewing maths resources: encouraging interests. When I found something that might interest my child who liked maths, I’d share it with her or pop it in our strewing notebook where she could find it later.
Years ago, if I had a free half hour or so, I’d open my computer and Google real-life maths or something similar. I scrolled through websites, sampled videos, and previewed books, hoping to find something that might excite my unschoolers.
I was recently invited to participate in a Virtual Kitchen Table podcast episode about unschool maths. After chatting with Erin and April for two hours, we still hadn’t exhausted this topic. So, yesterday, we returned to share more thoughts and ideas while recording a second maths episode. In particular, we talked about unschool maths resources, everyday maths experiences, and homeschool record-keeping tips. We discussed the question: at homeschool registration time, what evidence do we have that our kids are learning maths if we don’t have any workbook records?
Before connecting to the Internet for this conversation, I looked at a list of maths websites that I included on My BIG Page of Unschooling Resources. I followed all the links and discovered I needed to update a couple of them. So I did that. Here’s the updated list:
Maths Websites
Plus Magazine... living mathematics: Plus is an internet magazine which aims to introduce readers to the beauty and the practical applications of mathematics… Plus provides articles and podcasts on any aspect of mathematics, covering topics as diverse as art, medicine, cosmology and sport, a news section, showing how recent news stories were often based on some underlying piece of maths that never made it to the newspapers, reviews of popular maths books, and puzzles for you to sharpen your wits….
Wild Maths: Wild Maths is a collection of mathematical games, activities and stories, encouraging you to think creatively.
Nrich Maths: The NRICH Project aims to enrich the mathematical experiences of all learners.
Online Chart Tool: Charts are a great tool for communicating information visually. On Onlinecharttool.com you can design and share your own charts online and for free. We support a number of different chart types like: bar charts, pie charts, line charts, bubble charts and radar plots.
The Math Dude: Math can be confusing and scary. But it doesn’t have to be! I’ll decode the mystery (and fear) behind all aspects of math, helping you make sense of the math in your life.
Which One Doesn’t Belong? A website dedicated to providing thought-provoking puzzles for math teachers and students alike. There are no answers provided as there are many different, correct ways of choosing which one doesn’t belong.
Math Pickle: A free online resource of original mathematical puzzles, games and unsolved problems
Stand Up Maths: Youtube: mathematics and stand-up.
Numberphile: Youtube: Videos about numbers – it’s that simple.
Code by Math: A place for people to explore mathematics in the context of writing simple computer programs
A Brief History of Mathematics – podcast: Professor of Mathematics Marcus du Sautoy reveals the personalities behind the calculations and argues that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science
More or Less: Behind the Stats – podcast: Tim Harford and the More or Less team try to make sense of the statistics which surround us.
Yummy Math: engaging real world math activities
XP Math: XP Math features fun and educational math games for Grades 2-9
Mathematics in Movies: A collection of movie clips in which Mathematics appears
Murderous Maths: The books, the extra bits, games, hints, puzzles… they’re all here!
Cool Math Games: This is our brain-training site, for everyone, where logic & thinking meet fun & games. These games have no violence, no empty action, just a lot of challenges that will make you forget you’re getting a mental workout!
Maths Puzzles: A range of puzzles on this page, all with a mathematical connection, that are just waiting to be solved
Bedtime Math: Our mission is to help kids love numbers so they can handle the math in real life.
Vi Hart – Youtube, blog: Vi Hart likes triangles! AND APPLES!
Alex’s Adventures in Numberland
Australian Bureau of Statistics: The ABS is Australia’s national statistical agency, providing trusted official statistics on a wide range of economic, social, population and environmental matters of importance to Australia.
The Virtual Kitchen Table unschool maths episode will be published soon. In the meantime, you could listen to part 1 of our conversation if you haven’t already done that.
Unschooling Math – What Does Learning Math/s Naturally Look Like?
While updating the maths section of My Big Page of Unschooling Resources page, I realised that other sections also need updating. I shall be doing that soon.
A Real Life Maths Story
This morning, I opened my old Evernote record-keeping notebooks and discovered many photos I’d taken a few years ago while my girls were making music videos. I thought these photos were lost forever because they were stored on an external hard drive that malfunctioned, but there they were on Evernote!
Wanting to download the photos and other interesting things in my notebooks, I considered resubscribing to Evernote. But was I willing to pay the hefty annual fee? I decided not to bother until Evernote, seeing my reluctance to part with my money, offered me 40% off the subscription. I did some mental calculations, a bit of estimation, division and multiplication, considered the value of retrieving my images and other information, editing and adding to my notes, and decided to buy a subscription.
Now, I’m wondering if I’ll find anything helpful in my Evernote notebooks that I can share with you. Maybe I will.
