Tag: numbers

  • Family Math Night — Nachos & Numbers

    Family Math Night — Nachos & Numbers

    I attended the Statewide Parent Involvement Conference in San Antonio this weekend. There I saw Thomas Ecker, award winning classroom teacher and author of Nachos & Numbers.

    Ecker developed the Nachos & Numbers Family Math Night (and the book) based on years of experience in classroom teaching and parent involvement.

    But the book Nachos & Numbers is so much more than a guide for an annual parent involvement Math Night event at a school.

    You can use the activities at home, in the car or anywhere the urge to learn strikes your child!

    It has activities for all areas.

    Chapter 8 of the book is full of activities perfect for a homeschool family, classroom or family game night. There are activities that promote basic numeracy all the way up to probability and statistics.

    In the session, we created some place value pocket charts (found on page 24). This is a simple and fun activity you could do at your kitchen table!

    Place value pocket charts work great for practicing place value — and you can cram them in your purse for some on-the-go educational opportunities.

    One of my favorite activities is “Expanded Notation in Expanded Form” on page 27. It’s an awesome way to show how a number can be written as the sum of its parts.

    It has a step-by-step plan for a Family Math Night.

    If you’re in charge of Family Math Night at your school or want to create a Math Night for your homeschool group — Nachos & Numbers is the best resource to make it happen.

    At just $12.50, it will be the cheapest thing you buy for Family Math Night!

    The other chapters cover getting support, publicizing your Math Night for optimum parent involvement, getting the right food and getting volunteers — everything you need!

    Get it!

    Whether you’re a parent wanting some ideas or a Parent Involvement Specialist tasked with putting on the annual Math Night, Nachos & Numbers is a must-have resource!

    (By the way, I paid full price for it. They haven’t given me anything to recommend this — I just think it’s super awesome!)

    Share your thoughts in the comments or on twitter/x.

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  • Number Jewelry — The Perfect Gift!

    Number Jewelry — The Perfect Gift!

    Have a math person in your life? Know anyone that has a favorite number?

    Head to the James Avery site to find charms of the numbers up to 99. Get a chain or dangle ring to put it on and you have a great favorite number gift!

    Want to go the full mile? Get a necklace and have the Fibonacci sequence put on it!

    And if your mom, teacher or partner isn’t into finite numbers, there’s also the infinity set!

    What numeral would you want?

    Share your thoughts in the comments or on twitter/x.

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  • Our Number World

    Our Number World

    This is a math story, but the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

    UPDATE June 2026: When going back through content on MathFour.com, I read through this and it took me a while to figure out what the heck I was writing. If you start reading this and feel like you’re confused, try using this word unscrambler tool for the proper names in this story.

    There once was a strange little world called Lears. It was quite small, relatively speaking, and had only one continent. The residents called the continent Tailorsan and they named the single ocean (with all its very strange fish) Ralitanisor.

    In Tailorsan, there was a single city called Egrestin. Anyone living outside of the city was called a “mice lad.” (People weren’t very nice to those country folk!)

    All the Egrestins lived happily in Egrestin, it seemed. At least until one day…

    Crime set in!

    There was a group of Egrestins who didn’t seem to like anyone. They would meet regularly and fight. Everything they did was hateful and mean.

    So the more optimistic and positive of the Egrestins began to migrate to one side of the city. Soon they decided to form an official, and gated, neighborhood.

    They held a contest for the name of their new community and Mr. Reoz, a very liberal man, won. He had chosen “The Lehow Urbsmen.” (A rather fancy name, but they were the snobs of the city.)

    “That outta keep out the rubbish,” Mrs. Neetiff said to some of her neighbors as they finished the gate around their shiny new community.

    Mr. Reoz overheard her and was horrified.

    “Mrs. Neetiff. I understand that we don’t want crime in our neighborhood,” said Mr. Reoz, “and we don’t like all the negativity. But the people outside of The Lehow Urbsmen aren’t ‘rubbish’ — they’re people too!”

    She responded, “Well, how about this, then… why don’t you move outside our nice little community!?”

    Mr. Reoz looked at her and thought about it. He never liked her much — and she was so odd.

    He said, “Since I picked the name for the community, I don’t really think that’s right. But I’m not sure I want to live inside the gate with the likes of you!”

    So they rebuilt the gate to exclude Mr. Reoz’s house. He remained a part of the The Lehow Urbsmen, but just not inside the gate.

    He named the gate “The Alasturn” — a word that means “The Optimists” in the Learsian language. He hoped that giving them that name would have a positive effect on them.

    He became the middle man.

    Mr. Reoz eventually became friends with everyone in Egrestin. In his networking, he was able to introduce people from inside the Alasturn to other Egrestins.

    It seemed that through him, each member of the gated community perfectly matched someone outside of the community.

    And they lived happily ever after!

    Can you draw the map of Lears? What does this have to do with math? Did I miss anything?

    Share your thoughts in the comments or on twitter/x.

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  • Create Your Own Number Path – at Home!

    Create Your Own Number Path – at Home!

    I recently read about the difference between a number path and a number line in the book Mastering the Math Rack to Build Mathematical Minds.

    Walking up and down my hallway I noticed the tiles made a very nice number path. So I used some removable whiteboard wall decals and cut them in quarters.

    I wrote the numbers 0-11 on them with a permanent marker and slapped them down on the tiles.

    Later, while reviewing Carlito C. Caterpillar’s Math House Games for The Homeschool Post, I noticed Carlito suggested the same thing!

    My hallway is now a counting lesson!

    When we run down the hallway, now, we say the numbers as we step on them. This integrates counting, recognition of numbers and linearity all with body movement – which serves to solidify the learning.

    Not only that, but the removable decals don’t hurt the floor!

    And there’s more…

    When we were at the ice cream parlor, she noticed the tiles on the floor and started running along them and saying numbers! This was something I didn’t expect at all.

    Not only that, the three sets of three tiles created a number path of 11 when you included the two spacers. I don’t know if she recognized this, or if it was merely a coincidence. But it was fun to see.

    Will you do it?

    You can do this with anything that has a “block” pattern – at home, or in a classroom.

    Let me know if you try it – and the reaction of your kids – in the comments below.

    Disclaimer: The sweet folks over at MathRack.com sent me a bunch of MathRacks and the book, at no charge, for me to check out and report to you on, if I wanted to. You’ll be seeing more articles about these soon (they are really cool!).

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  • The 1-2-3 Song

    The 1-2-3 Song

    Part of the Count 10 Read 10 series to help parents connect with kids through math a little each day.

    Did you know that the alphabet song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep are all the same tune!?

    Well, now there’s another!

    Thanks to all the great folks who have public domain images out there that I could use for this.

    Specifically

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  • An Observation of Cardinals and Ordinals at the Playground

    An Observation of Cardinals and Ordinals at the Playground

    We were hanging at the playground on Mother’s day. Daughter had taken up with a cute little girl – a good playmate for the teeter-totter. I watched Daughter’s new friend do something interesting. She was “counting” some gumballs that had fallen off the sweetgum tree.

    Here’s what she said: ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT

    I looked and there were ten gumballs. I watched her more and saw that while she was reciting the terms and pointing at the gumball pile, she wasn’t associating each number word with the next gumball in the pile.

    Developmentally, I’m not sure if this is okay or not. I wonder.

    Mathematically, I know that there’s still a disconnect with this girl and what numbers mean to her.

    There are two types of numbers.

    In the realm of counting numbers, there are two types. Cardinals and ordinals. A cardinal number tells us how many we have. Like this:

    And ordinal number tells us the order:

    When we count, we use both types of numbers.

    The group of gumballs has the cardinal number of 10. But to arrive at that cardinal number, to determine how many there are, the friend had to “order” them. She was trying to point to each one and assign it a position. “YOU, I label 1st, you are 2nd … and since you are 10th, I know I have 10 gumballs.”

    We grownups take advantage of this procedure. Indeed most people don’t know what cardinals and ordinals are.

    But knowing this when you teach counting is quite helpful. At home you can do something similar to the potatoes in the pictures above. At school, you can buy some great posters (I found one at Teacher’s Heaven last night) that demonstrate this.

    Will you change the way you think and talk about numbers?