Whether you're literally outfitting a child or you want a few tchotchkes for a classroom of kiddos, Pi Day is mainstream enough that you can find everything from t-shirts, to temporary tattoos to Pi plates and tins with just a click these days. But the best stuff is the stuff you make yourself, right? So try your hand at making a colorful Pi Day Necklace.* This post contains affiliate links. Make a Pi Day Necklace Supplies Perler ... [ Read More ]
Candy Construction Challenge
The Candy Construction Challenge is what one of my friends refers to as a snacktivity. Snacktivities combine the best of all worlds: playing, learning, and eating. The Candy Construction Challenge is super easy and provides many ways to learn and play. And it's a fun way to prevent the summer slide. The idea is to have kids explore math and engineering concepts with toothpicks and candy. I'll share a few of my favorite ways to play. ... [ Read More ]
Use Sports to Build Math Skills
Is your child spending more time on the soccer field than in the classroom this summer? That can be a good thing. Summer sports provide compelling real-world opportunities for kids to apply and grow their math skills. Whether keeping score for a game or calculating batting averages, math is key to sports. It goes both ways: sports can also help with math—and other subjects, too. In addition, recent studies indicate a link between ... [ Read More ]
Back-to-School STEM Part 2: September #STEMchat Summary
The September #STEMchat sponsored by Texas Instruments was full of great ideas--too many for one post! I split the awesome in two. Part I covers transitioning back to school and loads helpful resources for students and their parents that provide assistance and enrichment in STEM topics. Below, we'll look at the crowdsourced view of critical STEM skills, the role of technology keeping girls in STEM, STEM in the movies and a fun side convo from the ... [ Read More ]
Back-to-School STEM Part I, the September #STEMchat Recap (Part 1)
The September STEMchat on Back-to-School STEM was sponsored by Texas Instruments. Our chat was so full of awesome that it's going to take two posts to summarize it! Also, we trended on Twitter. There's just too much to fit in, so consider this part one. Part two will follow soon.We started off talking about getting back into the school routine. Parent-tested back-to-school tips included a lot of sleep suggestions, like trying to get in the ... [ Read More ]
The Boy Who Invented TV: The Story of Philo Farnsworth
I think I've mentioned that I'm the managing editor of the parent blog at Bedtime Math, a site that encourages an evening math problems (and other math fun) for kids ages 3-8. The Bedtime Math folks share a daily math problem via their website, email, and app and their Facebook page. At any rate yesterday's math problem gave a nod to The Boy Who Invented TV, Philo Farnsworth, in honor of the anniversary of his 1930 patent. That reminded me ... [ Read More ]
Fun Math Resources for Families: June #STEMchat Recap
Thanks to our fabulous panelists, sponsor Bedtime Math, and participants like you, we had a great June #STEMchat focused on recreational math, or fun math resources for families. Our lively crowd share a whole lot of great ideas as you'll see by the dozens of math links below.We "chatters" not only support the idea of integrating math into everyday life, but we walk the talk with family games, observations and activities. It's clear ... [ Read More ]