It's a crime, really, that school makes math so boring, when there are so many ways to do the opposite, for anyone who wants to. Denise Gaskins's book is full of ideas. Pattern Blocks are one that we've put to use at Big Sister Mouse, where I work in Laos. Older students spent an afternoon making a giant batch of the tiles from corrugated plastic, then we gave them to kids who had never seen such a thing. They created everything from pictures of elephants to geometric patterns like this one.
When I ordered this book I hoped it would be organized in the form of game like activities each practicing and teaching particular math skill or concept ordered according to increasingly challenging math skills and concepts. This book is a narrative promoting learning through activities that help children either develop a general math or geometric sense. It is about promoting a deeper understanding of math rather than route operations and memorizing algorithms.
I am in total alignment with this method of approaching math but one has to read through a long narrative with activities embedded within it but not particularly organized. It is not easy to use this book as a source of simple, fun, meaningful, math activities. One has to search through the book to find a potentially useful activity. Most are discussed in very general terms rather than explicitly, leaving the parent to invent the activities.
For what it is this is a great book and I would rate it a 5 for what it really is and 1 for what I thought it was and needed. So I averaged the scores and gave it a three but for what I need it for it actually is a generous score. I think if you have the same goal I think you will need another book.
This book is helping me discover a love for math. I grew up hating math and being embarrassed by it. This book gives me the confidence to love it and teach it in a fun and engaging way
My 2nd grader struggles to enjoy math only because she has a mom who never enjoyed it. This book has given me the confidence to teach her in ways that are different and more exciting than doing work from a workbook. There are plenty of free resources noted and it will be useful for helping her all the way through high school.
I love Denise Gaskin's "Let's Play Math" and recommend it as often as I can. Her approach is both highly conceptual in that it explains the math concepts clearly and accurately without gimmicks and playful at the same time. She opens up showing why using FOIL (first, outside, inside, last) stunts conceptual learning and shows what the intent of FOIL actually does by breaking up a rectangle. Using the more conceptual approach, a student knows what is going on and won't burn out as they go on to more complex equations.I personally felt rejuvenated, committed, and inspired after reading her work.
She says plainly what I needed to hear: children learn best with one-on-one involvement from an adult. Knowing she has researched so many math programs, books, and websites, I feel extremely confident in the approach she puts forward. I don't feel like I need to try this or that approach. The high quality games she recommends are well worth my time--and my children love them.
My 6-year-old absolutely loves trying to trick me, his mom, one of Gaskin's recommendations--and he often both tricks me and beats me at math games. We love playing a game where we try to get to a number, such as the number 6, using a calculator. Try to get to 6 from 9, now 3, now -1, now -923,145. I was stunned my first grader could do this, and I was inspired by Gaskins to do challenges like this. I also found my son did not want to do worksheets or write anything down but when we did verbal challenges like this, his skills were very advanced.
I want to see her work spread far and wide and if this review can help, I am happy to write it. Please don't hesitate to buy this book!
Amber (author of "Misbehavior is Growth: An Observant Parent's Guide to the Toddler Years")
Wow, what an inspiring read for any parent! My favorite part is how she teaches you how to help when your kids are studying subjects you are unfamiliar to the parent. Easy to read and tons of useful information!
Let's talk teaching math, shall we? I wish I would have discovered Denise Gaskins about 20 years ago. Actually, I wish I would have been able to sit at her table and just talk about teaching my kids math.
I'm a homeschooler. Those people who say you can't wreck your kids homeschooling obviously hadn't met me. And obviously, they hadn't talked to all the parents I've talked to that are prone to make do what the Bible calls, "Drive your children to wrath."
What is a parent to do if they don't know how to teach? Look, get this book. Denise is a warm and inviting friend. The first thing she will do is tell you how math education got here. She will calm your fears and then give you a different plan. She is going to walk you through the math and give you new ways to think about the stuff you did in school and ways to think about teaching that doesn't include worksheets.
And she honors her word. She PLAYS math. And if you don't let the "fear" take over, she will introduce you to playing math as well. "Playing math" looks very different than "Teaching math".
I have told people that the introduction to the book is worth the price. I wasn't lying. If you read the introduction and take it seriously you may be able to spare your child from hating math. That's a pretty big deal, because math is a really cool subject and should be seen, along with the great books, as another liberal art. Math is beautiful, enchanting and strange and you would never guess that from our modern textbooks.
After you read Denise's book, do a search for Gattegno and Cuisenaire and keep playing. She lays a fine foundation to his book "Now Johnny Can Do Arithmetic." That book can be read online free at ISSUU.
I'm beginning to homeschool my just turned 5 year old son and I really want him to love math. I don't want to drill and kill him, but to have fun and create aha! Moments.
This is an amazing book stuffed full of very usable ideas. Too much for getting everything in one reading. I'll definitely be rereading and taking lots of notes.
Bottom line is yes, you should buy this. And yes, it's worth it. And no, you don't already have a book that's similar.I am very impressed with this book.
This is my new favorite math book. I was afraid to buy "another math book," that also was not available from our library and did not have many reviews yet, and was written by a veteran homeschooler with a math background (-that should be a good thing, and in this case it is, but I've been burned before). But I'm so glad I took a chance. Finally, something with a trustworthy math worldview (ala Jo Baoler and the like) that is written for the homeschooler! It will take you through grade school. Keith Devlin gives exceeding endorsement in the forward.
This book really opened my eyes to how math can be fun and less stressful as a subject in my homeschool. It made it seem less mysterious and less separate from the relaxed way I teach our other subjects.
This book is great. It explains in a simple doable way, with examples, how to do mathematics at home that is fun and natural. No special equipment is needed, only things You will have around the house. This book is a must for every parent, especially homeschooling parents, who want to liven up maths in their home and make maths a joy rather than drudgery. Both the why and the how are clearly explained with pictures when appropriate.
One of my all time favorite math books - so glad to see a new edition! It gives you the ideas and encouragement to create a meaningful math culture in your homeschool. Get rid of those horrid drill and kill worksheets and help your kids develop their math skills through games and inquiry tasks. Every homeschool mom should own this book.
This is my first iBook. I am liking it a lot. I am the funny old lady in the coffee shop with her nose in her iPhone, contemplating the math games I will play with my grandchildren next visit. Looking forward to reading more from Denise Gaskins.
Full of great information and ideas. This was just what I'm looking for.
I absolutely enjoyed this book. It brought back childhood memories when my older brothers were challenging our mom to solve algebra problems. I remember how much fun they had!
Now, being a mom myself, I was looking for ideas of how to teach math to my son. It's really nice to get so many resources in one book. I have being using suggested games and websites right away with a great success. This is a great resource for parents,who actively participate in their children education. It's very inspiring.
Thank you for sharing.
This has been a very useful tool in homeschooling my children ages 11, 7, and 4. I have also used several ideas for games using the 100 chart and or a number line not only for my children but a child I tutor. I enjoy how this teaches that math can be learned and enjoyed by all no matter what fears of math they may have or had. A great resource for any teacher or homeschool family!
I am so pleased to have found this wonderful book. After reading it I am very excited to begin teaching my kids to think like mathematicians. I have always had the feeling that I missed out on something with math and this book has given me some great ideas about how to go find what was missing!
Let's Play Math: How Homeschooling Families Can Learn Math Together, and Enjoy It! (Homeschool Math Manuals) by Denise Gaskins, is a beautiful book that explains the "why" and "how" of teaching math from a Constructivist perspective. It is well researched, well annotated, and includes loads of activities that you can try with kids K-12 at home. While reading the book, I found myself remembering a lot of things I had forgotten from my teacher-training in Constructivist math.
Teaching math from a Constructivist perspective means enabling children to develop their own meaningful strategies for solving problems, instead of just blindly teaching traditional algorithms. It also means giving children time, space, and materials to explore mathematical concepts and create their own understanding.
There were so many parts of this book that I highlighted that I really gave my Kindle a workout!
There is a whole section that I'm going to come back to this summer, to keep my kids busy. But was especially useful to me at this moment, were the talking points for helping kids solve problems on their own. I'm going to print up all of the talking points and post them in our kitchen so that my husband and I will have a list of questions to prompt our son's thinking.
I can't wait until the author publishes Let's Play Algebra!
I love math, but had forgotten why I developed a love for math in the first place. This book made me realize how experiences in my childhood lit a spark in me to work any math problem, not because I was required to do so, or even because my project required the answer, but because the thrill of solving the puzzle was reward enough. Denise Gaskins shows us how we can ignite this fire in our own children. I believe her suggestions are invaluable for homeschoolers, but essential for the many parents whose children are learning to dislike math in school.
I happen to be a scholar in Classical Studies and I loved how this book reframes our concepts of Math to recover an intuitive, living sense of numbers and the real world. Math is not a human creation, but a discovery. Math is about reality. Solving algebra problems won't help children understand Math unless they are acquainted with it this way.
The book helps parents understand what Math really is about, what fun there is in it, and how school managed to kill our potential love for it. Along the way, readers will learn games and kinds of behavior they can adopt to develop a Math sense in their children. They will also realize that if a person has the "Math feeling", no academic subject will be harsh to her, and they will want their children to have this singular advantage.
Classical students or homeschoolers will love this book, because it is about using Math to develop intelligence, to make the mind stronger, to be better, so to speak. A motto for this book could be "be a Math genius, content will follow". Naturally, classical students think this way about every academic discipline, and will find a friend in this astounding work.