This is the 7th in the draft purge series where I’m throwing stuff out over a three week period.
Rules often leave out the details.
Don’t drink alcohol and drive a vehicle in public, simultaneously.
Find a common denominator, when adding fractions.
Do it to both sides of the equal sign.
Multiplication comes before addition in arithmetic.
Find a point using slope from another point on the line.
Details!
Share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter/X.
When your email becomes unbearable, what then? Unsubscribe to everything? Delete what you’ve already responded to?
But what if you have 10,000 emails? How long will that take? And can you batch them?
One every second takes almost three hours.
Looking at each for 5 seconds takes fifteen hours.
Yipes!
We used to discover math.
Now it’s processed and canned in textbook factories.
We spoon feed it to our kids.
And sprinkle it with carcinogenic sweeteners.
We make the spoons bigger and force feed this gruel to them.
So much in our world is going organic.
Maybe math should too.
It’s my turn, again, to host the very cool Math Teachers at Play Blog Carnival.
Fridays sometimes have a 50 Word Friday article with a special feature – exactly 50 words. I’m doing a variation of this – every sentence in this post has 15 words exactly.
Maths Insider‘s Caroline gives us even more jobs that need math; now she’s got 34!
Colleen Young notes: World Math Day is over but you can still get free games!
Malke shares her child’s story of working the Hundred’s Chart; I’m giddy to try it!
Lula, a homeschooling mom, shares her awesome perfect math curriculum; I’m loving her book recommendations!
Denise‘s brief review of Fermat’s Enigma gives us a taste of that cool history book.
The clever folks at IMACS shared a fun little logic puzzle: go find Max’s house!
Sue visited a second grade class and let them do problems their way – great story! Then she shared some curious insights into the world of memorizing math facts – very useful!
Bree is letting his class field the questions he’s getting from colleagues – as professional mathematicians!
Math Hombre turned Yahtzee into a “be a mathematician” game; the kids enjoyed and learned! And who can resist Xavier Golden’s amazing comic artistry of Mr. Slope Guy – my hero!
Mr. Chase‘s rant on rationalizing and simplifying is correct, brilliant and familiar; he is me!
Tiger got to experience tangram puzzles free from “right” answers – pure creativity and learning here!
John refutes the ridiculous notion that Silicon Valley changes the “definition of mathematics” – as if…
Toddler Olympics are cute, fun and full of learning; these twins are Learners in Bloom! And they do math that inspires me to start more formally with Daughter – can’t wait!
Cats and Qtips; parabolas and paths; Rebecka explains a quadratics lesson with the strangest supplies!
Frederick has created a (pretty hard) quiz for fun; don’t try it when you’re tired!
Do you have a math article on your site that involves some type of play? Share the post (and the url) in the comments section so we can enjoy it!
(Wow – that was a challenge that I’m not sure I’ll ever want to take again!)
If you want to tweet this insanity to your friends and/or PLN click here.
Oh – I use this word counter tool to do these word and character based articles!
There is a tractor named Katy
Who pushes snow with a plow.
She cleaned up her town quite quickly
Without a furrow of brow.
The book that was written about her
Is a classic, there’s no doubt
But there’s also math all through it
A fact I just gotta shout!
This article is a part of the 50 Word Friday series. Learn more about this strange, limited writing style here…
![[50 Word Friday] Two Thousand Twelve](http://mathfour.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/FireworksFlickr_bayasaa_CCBY-1.png)
Two thousand twelve
Into what will you delve?
12 plus 2000 more.
Will you be rich or will you be poor?
12 years past Y2K
Do you want to change what you weigh?
Half of 4-0-2-4
Do you want to change the score?
2-0-1-2
What will you decide to do?
This article is a part of the 50 Word Friday series. Learn more about this strange, limited writing style here…
Feature image by bayasaa | Flickr.com | CC BY
![[50 Word Friday] Math in Christmas Lights](http://mathfour.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/MathFourChristmasLightsFI-1.jpg)
When looking at Christmas lights with a child, you see things you might never have seen before.
Lights around a window make a rectangle. Lights that droop might be a parabolic or catenary curve.
And some people hang their Christmas lights in triangles!
What shapes are in your Christmas lights?
This article is a part of the 50 Word Friday series. Learn more about this strange, limited writing style here…
![[50 Word Friday] Say Hi to The Math Shack!](http://mathfour.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-17.png)
There was a math mom who wanted to help other moms be more math-y. She went into the garage to put together a website. Eight months later her husband was sick of her taking up garage space.
Introducing The Math Shack – safe haven for all things mom and math!
![[50 Word Friday] Quit Counting Up to Punishment!](http://mathfour.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image.png)
“You have until 5 to stop! 1, 2…” says the mom to her child.
Isn’t it interesting how even punishment involves math? And it involves it negatively so!
Why don’t we say, “Stop that. Now.”
Or, “I’m going to give you until E to stop! … A, B, C, D, E.”
Learn more about 50 Word Friday here.
![[50 Word Friday] Cars Driving in Circles](http://mathfour.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/image-18.png)
Daughter wanted to play. I wanted her to learn. We did both.
She learned:
Learn and play – the best way!
Learn more about 50 Word Friday here.