Tag Archives: puzzles

Dots in a Square from Math Without Words

Posted on February 10, 2017 by aofradkin

Recently, my third grade class and I have fallen in love with Math Without Words by James Tanton. This is a delightful collection of math puzzles, ranging in difficulty from fairly easy to quite hard, but all mathematically beautiful. Occasionally, … 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 aofradkin

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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Fun Math Festival

Posted on February 18, 2016 by aofradkin

[This is a guest post made by my sister, Yulia Shpilman, about the awesome math festival that she organized last weekend.] So I finally did it!  I organized a math festival (thank you to Jane Kats for her inspiration and … Continue reading →

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Kid in the Machine

Posted on May 12, 2015 by aofradkin

A few weeks ago, we had a lesson on one of my favorite topics to have little kids play around with – functions!  When covering this topic with little ones, a very important first step is to create a cool … Continue reading →

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Katie the logician

Posted on April 30, 2015 by aofradkin

Yesterday, Katie came up with her own, consistent logic puzzle!  This is how it happened (with the puzzle, of course). I was flipping through Alice in Puzzle-Land by Raymond Smullyan, which had just arrived in the mail.  Naturally, she asked … Continue reading →

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Counting Rectangles

Posted on October 22, 2014 by aofradkin

This week we continued playing with rectangles, but this time we were counting them.  This can be more tricky than it sounds.  I started the lesson by drawing a single rectangle on the board.  The kids all agreed that there … Continue reading →

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Pentaminoes

Posted on April 3, 2014 by aofradkin

Last Sunday at the Golden Key Russian School, we did a fun and engaging activity involving pentaminoes.  Pentaminoes are shapes made out of five squares connected along edges.  There are 12 of them up to rotations and reflections: These shapes … Continue reading →

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Romantic Puzzles

Posted on March 27, 2014 by aofradkin

As I have mentioned in the past, Katie is a Girl – she likes playing with dolls, getting dressed up, listening to stories about fairies and princesses…  At the same time she also likes math and puzzles.  So when for … Continue reading →

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Pushing Wood

Posted on February 26, 2014 by aofradkin

I realized that for me writing for two blogs is somehow psychologically much more difficult than putting the same content into one blog.  That’s why in addition to my adventures with Katie this blog will now have posts about math … Continue reading →

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