Independence Day is past. Summer is quickly passing. Kids are enjoying their break from school as are teachers. But what is happening to your kids' math ability this summer? According to Learner.com, 70-78% of elementary students experience a decline in math skills over the summer. (Source) Most schools now assign summer reading to prevent the summer slide in literary skills, but does your child's school assign summer math? Most high schools do these days. Now I am a huge advocate for a break! I love summer! It is my favorite season, and I remember the days of having nothing to do and being able to hang out with friends and relax. However, summer slide is real. (There is a slide after any vacation and the longer the vacation the more skills lost.) There are things to do to help with the math summer slide even if your child does not have math summer work. Today I am going to review two great resources for different ages to help with the summer slide or just give extra practice to two ages groups: middle grades (8+) and high school. These books are amazing resources to help with math skills and also can give students extra practice or a leg up on the upcoming math year. At the end of the post, I have a roundup for different ages math products and activities to try this summer to keep your child's brain thinking mathematically.
Our first book is for ages 8+ and really helps keeping the multiplication facts and some division fresh for the summer or to use to help kids practice them more! It is Mega Math Maze: A Multiplication Adventure by Kjartan Poskitt.
About the Book:
Mazes, hidden keys, secret doors, and more—Mega Math Maze turns math learning into an exciting adventure that uses multiplication to complete a quest. Die cut pages enable students to travel back and forth between fourteen maze worlds that make up the epic adventure.Readers explore a variety of maze worlds, solving multiplication facts and navigating pathways and portals through pages as they complete a quest to restore numbers to a multiplication chart. Mega Math Maze leads students through a jungle, up a mountain, into a cave, and through other adventurous terrains. To complete the quest and make their way through the book, students must solve multiplication facts and follow pathways to the right answers. And just when the adventurers complete their quest, they’re tasked with another quest to journey back through the maze via alternate paths using division and secret doors in search of a mystery sign.
Mega Math Maze is an engaging way to way to reinforce multiplication facts. Each time students explore the mazes they’ll find new information that helps to build their math comprehension. The super accessible, illustrated backmatter provides bonus information about multiplication patterns, as well as tips and tricks, special numbers, and more.
From Me:
As a high school teacher, the skills I care most about kids coming into my early high school classes are their arithmetic facts and working with fractions and decimals. Even though kids are allowed calculators I find most will not use them for basic arithmetic but often this is where the mistakes are made. For some kids who do not know their facts, for various reasons including disabilities, the problems take longer. This book is a fun way to help with multiplication facts and ensure your child knows them.
The book has a fun story about the numbugs that work in the Number Factory. One day the numbers escape from the 1-12 times table and the numbugs ask the reader to help find them. Then there are fourteen double page spreads of different "worlds" of mazes with holes punched through for some of the numbers. The reader solves the multiplication problem and drops down to where the actual number is written. This is an important step into following the maze. If you do not drop all the way down, it is very confusing what you should do next. (I didn't follow the instructions and got very confused!) If reader follow these instructions, he or she will be solving many of the multiplication problems from 1x1 to 12x12. The reader will be turning the pages back and forth repeatedly. Then once all of the numbers have been found the numbugs have the reader begin with some division facts with the special doors.
Then at the end of the book are pages for number theory. The pages point out patterns in the multiplication table, explain prime and composite numbers, square numbers, tetrahedral numbers and square pyramid numbers and then teach some multiplication tricks. These end pages are some of my favorites!! There is so much here that often is not taught in school but are helpful and interesting. Overall, this book provides a fun way to practice multiplication tables and keep your child's brain thinking mathematically all summer! It is perfect for someone who just learned to multiply to keep reviewing without flash cards!! Plus, the end pages share so much more information that might get the reader thinking mathematically in different ways!!
Our next book is for high school students or advanced middle school students who have taken or are about to take (or are taking) geometry. It is part of the One Big Fat Notebook Series. If you do not know this series, be sure to check it out. These books are amazing to complement class lessons and to review subjects. They have them for middle school and high school class levels. Today's book is the supplement of one that I previously reviewed, Everything You Need to Ace Geometry in One Big Fat Notebook. Now as a geometry teacher I am really excited to share these books with you. Geometry is the subject I have taught at every school I have worked. I love geometry! Today's book is The Big Fat High School Geometry Workbook by Workman Publishing.
About the Book:
This write-in workbook offers support and practice opportunities for students studying Geometry including recaps of key Geometry concepts and a variety of question types, including short answer, extended answers, and word problems—plus a stepped-by-step solution for each question.Students love the direct, accessible delivery of Everything You Need to Ace Geometry in One Big Fat Notebook. This workbook takes the same approach of easy-to-understand explanations of key concepts, stepped-out examples, helpful doodles, captions, and hundreds of exercises to provide additional practice of the Geometry concepts students learn in class.
From Me:
I love how this entire series simplifies the subject for the learner. There are definitions, theorems and examples in this book and then there are pages of practice problems for the reader to try. The chapters align with most Geometry books that I have seen. The examples are easy to follow, and I love all the color to make things stand out.
This workbook is great practice for someone who is taking or has taken Geometry and wants to review it perhaps for the SATs or ACTs. It is also the great companion with Everything You Need to Ace Geometry in One Big Fat Notebook. With the two books a student could work through the entire year of Geometry to get ahead. When I first became a teacher, I would teach summer school. Each year they would have me teach the next course and I would always have one student in the class. She actually told me her school wouldn't give her credit for summer school, but she was taking it as a preview for the upcoming year. It helped her maintain her grade point average. She could ask me questions and get the basics down, so it was easier during the school year to be successful. These two books together could do that for anyone about to take Geometry (or currently taking it). They teach the math in a simple way without necessarily going into some of the more difficult nuisances of the subjects. It is a great basic introduction and will get a student understanding the basics and be ready for the challenges the class may bring. As with most math books, you can check your answers with Bob, as math teachers often call it, or the back of the book.
I highly recommend this book (and its companion) for anyone learning Geometry, about to learn Geometry or wanting to review Geometry. Now I am sure you are thinking, Carrie, my child isn't doing multiplication facts or Geometry. Don't worry, I have some other activities and books for all different ages and classes.
Math Resource Roundup:
For this roundup I have four categories: Picture Books (ages 3-8), Middle Grades (ages 8-12), High School (Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2), and Fun Activities for different ages. Some of the categories can overlap. For example a game in the middle grades may be fun to a high school student as well.
Picture Books
1) Shapes & Patterns with Books from the Library including printable Geometry scavenger hunt
3) Spatial Math Books for ages 3-6
4) Fractions with Quilts Activity to go with The Patchwork Path
5) So Big and So Small a picture book about size comparing for ages 3-8
6) Products to Help with Multiplication, Fractions and More
7) Library Books that Introduce Algebra, Shapes, & Time/Distance
8) Various books including Peg + Cat and Annie Aardvark
9) Look A book to teach pattern finding
10) Now What? A Math Tale is a picture book about shapes for ages 2-5
11) Books from the Library about Math in Nature
12) Peg + Cat and the Race Car Problem or any Peg + Cat book, show or activity they are for ages 3-7
13) Twinderella a math themed Cinderella story for ages 4-8
14) The Golden Quest for ages 6-11 about money with compound interest activities for different ages
Not Pictured in this Collage: Annie Aardvark Adding Ants, 100 Fun & Easy Learning Games for Kids, The Unofficial Guide to Learning with LEGO®, Missing Math about number sense
Middle Grades
The middle grade collage includes some fun novels that have math or number themes in them as well as some games and more!
1) Six Thousand Doughnuts a novel with some fun fraction math and coming of age
2) Danny Chung Sums It Up a novel about family and the universal language of math
3) Math in Origami and Area Mazes
4) Qwirkle a fun game with shapes and patterns
5) Math Quest Series --mathematical puzzle books to read and solve
6) Rat Rule 79 a fantasy novel full of twists and turns with logic and more for ages 10+
7) Math Inspectors Series a great series of novels for STEM and mystery lovers!
9) Leaps & Ledges Game with lots of problem-solving skills and number skills
10) Math Activity Book and STEM book
11) Exploring Shapes with a Craft
12) Perplexors or logic puzzles!
13) Math Mysteries: The Triplet Threat
Not Pictured in this Collage: Mesmerizing Math, The Unofficial Guide to Learning with LEGO®, Mathematical Dates,
High School
1) Everything You Need to Know to Ace Pre-Algebra and Algebra 1 in One Big Fat Notebook
2) The Big Fat High School Algebra 1 Workbook
4) Everything You Need to Know to Ace Geometry in One Big Fat Notebook
7) Pythagorean Theorem Art (Algebra 1 and Geometry)
8) Origami Polyhedra for Beginners (and really any origami is great for Geometry)
9) Parent Graph Transformations (Algebra 2)
10) Dollhouse Scaling (Algebra 1 & Geometry)
11) Sierpinski Gasket Art (Geometry) Using information on measuring with ruler and midsegments of triangles
13) Fibonacci Spiral Art (Geometry & Algebra 2)
14) Fractal Tree Project using information about measuring angles and lines as well as information about fractals
Not Pictured in this Collage: It's a Numberful World, Mathematical Dates, Geometric Origami,
Math Activities and Crafts
1) Tangrams
2) Fractal Lesson: Koch Snowflakes for this lesson the student needs to know how to measure with a ruler and divide by 2
3) Fractal Lesson: Sierpinski Gasket for this lesson the student needs to know how to measure with a ruler and find midpoints
4) Some Math Discoveries for different age groups
5) Extreme Dot to Dot and Color Counts fun activities to keep kids thinking mathematically and counting higher!
7) 100 Fun & Easy Learning Games for Kids -- full of fun activities to play and learn about various subjects for 3-7
8) Exploring Shapes with God's Eye Craft
9) Mesmerizing Math a book full of all sorts of interesting math for ages 7-10
10) Statistics Lesson with Candy
12) Origami Polyhedra for Beginners (and really any origami is great for Geometry)
13) The Complete Guide to Origami Polyhedra
Not Pictured in this Collage: Other origami posts, The Art & Science of Geometric Origami, Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers, Perplexors (logic puzzles for different ages), Extreme Dot to Dot (great for learning larger numbers),
