The beginning of summer is the season of reading lists. You can find them everywhere, suggestions of media with which students and other active thinkers can exercise their minds free from the confines of a syllabus. Novels will help you develop reading and English skills. Anything from podcasts to comic books can support your learning of a foreign language. But how can students of mathematics develop, refine, and utilize math skills independently? It probably seems more difficult to practice math during the summer months.
Here are five fun, engaging activities to nourish your mind’s mathematical needs.
1. Sudoku and KenKen
Celebrated and distributed by many newspapers, including The New York Times, Sudoku and KenKen are mathematical grid-based games that develop skills of analytical assessment, logical thinking, and the very useful process of elimination. KenKen has the added bonus of using calculations. These puzzles are plentiful (and usually free) online and in collections in book stores, and they can be found in every degree of difficulty from very simple to extremely difficult.
2. Books by Louis Sachar
For elementary and middle school students with a wacky sense of humor, try Louis Sachar’s Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School, a delightfully mathematical companion to his zany and entertaining story collection Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Sideways Arithmetic and its sequel are dense with clever, challenging puzzles that demand creativity and logic and elegantly set a basis for algebraic rigor.
3. Sets game
The Sets game is rich with mathematical thought, yet completely free of calculations. It involves matching sets of three cards which are either all the same or all different in each of four categories: shading, shape, cardinality, and color. It can be played alone or with any number of friends. The New York Times also offers free daily Sets puzzles.
2 Comments on Don’t Lose It—Use It! Practice Math Thinking in the Summer, last added: 7/10/2010
Hey.. it's interesting. I might stop by again next time ;)