Tag Archives: problem solving

Drawing heads, tails, knees, and toes – useful?

Posted on October 24, 2017 by

Drawing a useful picture or diagram is an important problem-solving skill.  From teaching different groups of elementary school children, I have noticed that some students are very reluctant to draw anything whereas others will draw elaborate pictures with lots of … Continue reading →

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Avoid Hard Work! – A book for problem-solvers of all levels (toddler to mathematician)

Posted on January 11, 2017 by

It is the beginning of winter break and the family is off to a vacation.  The car ride ahead is many hours.  Ten minutes into the drive, Katie (8 years old) realizes that she forgot her book.  In desperation, she … Continue reading →

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Playing Math Detectives: First Week of Second Grade Math

Posted on September 11, 2016 by

The first week in our second grade class we did lots of time traveling.  We played the role of math detectives and helped people from different time periods solve problems.  We also learned about some ancient number systems. On the … Continue reading →

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Keeping Kids’ Curiosities Alive: Conversation with James Tanton

Posted on September 6, 2016 by

What associations do words like “meaningful, joyful, relevant, human, with thinking” invoke in your mind? Of all the possibilities, I bet one of the least likely associations is “mathematics”.  And yet, if you ask James Tanton, the Mathematician-at-Large for the … Continue reading →

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First of many?

Posted on March 24, 2015 by

When I first told Katie (6 y/o) that I signed her up for the Math Kangaroo competition, she got very excited and immediately started bombarding me with questions.  Will I win?  What if I don’t win?  What if I can’t solve … Continue reading →

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