The school weeks are winding down and summer is quickly approaching. While teachers and students alike welcome the break, it’s important to keep math skills alive over the many weeks of summer vacation.

Here are four fun ideas for helping your kids use their math skills this summer:

 1. Download and play My Dear Aunt Sally

This new, engaging math game by Ron Larson reinforces many of the Common Core skills that are vital to math literacy. Playing the game for 15 minutes a day is a fun, easy way to keep math skills fresh! My Dear Aunt Sally includes number sense, number operations, order of operations, and problem solving.

2. Set up a family game night

The Big Ideas Math Game Closet includes dozens of interactive math games that can be printed and played at home. Get the family together once a week, make some popcorn, and have fun with math!

3. Ask the kids to help with dinner

Cooking together is a great way to reinforce math skills! Using measuring cups is a perfect way to practice adding or subtracting fractions (example: The recipe calls for ½ cup of flour. How many quarter cups could I use to get the same amount?). Cutting a pizza into equal parts lends easily to fraction questions as well.

4. Get active

Get your child a pedometer to wear and keep track of his/her daily steps. Keep a record of the daily count for a week (or more) and graph the results to compare the steps taken each day. Students can also record their heart rate while performing various activities (resting, walking, running, climbing stairs, jumping, etc.) and compare the results.

Are there any activities you would add to the list? Please share them with us in the comments!

Big Ideas Learning has partnered with RD Imagine to launch a new math game, My Dear Aunt Sally, that reinforces many of the skills demanded by the Common Core State Standards in grades 2-8.  The over 300 difficulty levels of the game range from adding whole numbers to multiple operations involving rational numbers.

My Dear Aunt Sally was developed by Ron Larson, Ph.D., author of the Big Ideas Math program. The game was 6 months in development and incorporates successful learning styles recommended by the new Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice.

Larson said “When I started looking at the math games that are available, I realized two things.  First, they aren’t fun.  Second and more importantly, they don’t employ higher level thinking that is so necessary for success in mathematics. With My Dear Aunt Sally, we changed that.  The game is both fun and employs higher level thinking.”

The game covers the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponents, as applied to whole numbers, integers, decimals, fractions, and rational numbers.  Embedded in the game are dozens of animations and bonus games.

My Dear Aunt Sally is available free at www.MyDearAuntSally.com.  It is also available for purchase as an App at the Apple App Store and at Google Play.

Check out the fantastic review of My Dear Aunt Sally over at Fun Educational Apps.

This year we exhibited with a brand new booth design. We were very excited to showcase our new Common Core Curriculum program, and the new design highlighted it perfectly. In case you were unable to attend the conference, here are some pictures of our new setup:

Big Ideas Math authors Ron Larson and Laurie Boswell will be signing books on Thursday, April 18th, at 11:00 am in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt booth # 1517.

Our Big Ideas Math Director of Curriculum, Denise McDowell, will be presenting a session called Using Mathematical Practices to Promote Active Learning and Higher-Order Thinking on Monday, March 18 at 10:00 am in Room W185A.

If you are attending the conference, consider attending Denise’s informative session as she shares instructional strategies that promote active learning and higher-order thinking. Also, be sure to visit Big Ideas Math in Booth 725 in the Exhibit Hall.

The Most Promising New Textbook award was created in 2012, to recognize current textbooks and learning materials, still in their first editions. Judges are published textbook authors.

We explored a tessellation activity in the Red book (Section 5.2). Students used manipulatives to complete the activity.

We had a great time with the Colorado Springs staff and students!

Challenge your students to be as creative as possible when decorating their gingerbread men. When the entries have been displayed, have students vote for their top three favorites. You can use this as an opportunity to discuss the probability of one gingerbread man winning over another or to review the voting method and tallying procedures.

Click to download: Gingerbread Man template (PDF)

The Big Ideas Math and Larson Texts, Inc. staff recently took part in a company Gingerbread Man Contest. Here are some of the best entries to use as examples:

Which one is your favorite?

The most frequently asked question in a math classroom is actually asking for rigor.

What does this mean?  We need to be taking math education much deeper than we have in the past.  Our math classrooms have been centered around the students acquiring knowledge, memorizing algorithms and processes.  This is important, but it is time to go further into understanding and using the knowledge.

Math is truly used in real life, and in just concentrating on gaining math skills we have neglected the “what do we do with it?” question.  Rigor is referencing the Depth of Knowledge that students gain through doing and using mathematics.  The lowest levels ask students to recall or apply a formula.  They may even ask students to do a basic application of the skill.  Higher levels are more concerned with having students explain their thinking, justify their conclusions  and use reasoning to apply the skills they have learned.  The highest level asks students  to think outside the box.

Lower levels

Example 1:

Example 2:

_________________________________________________________________

Higher levels

Example 3:

Example 4:

We are educating today’s students for jobs that don’t exist yet.  We must help students gain the skill of applying what they have learned to totally different situations.  Adding rigor to the classroom helps the students, think, learn and understand.

Students can handle the challenge and even welcome when they ask, “When are we going to use this stuff?”

(Problems: 1.  Red page 72; 2.  Blue page 284; 3.  Green page 19; 4.  Purple page 131)

For years math class has predominantly been “Show and Tell” by the teacher. The students have watched the teacher do several examples and then they use those examples to do many problems. Often students saw no connection between the concepts and many times saw no reason to “study this stuff.”

Common Core has changed that to “Think and Do” by the students. Math classes should now include some discovery activities using manipulatives and discussions that allow the students to determine what the process is and why it works. Teachers have time to help students develop an understanding of the concepts they are studying.

It is no longer a mystery as to why they add six or multiply by two. As the students learn to problem solve through understanding, they can transfer the learning to other concepts. Through the use of hands-on discovery, all students will gain an understanding of what they are doing. Watching the experts play a sport or a musical instrument has never made anyone a star. We learn by doing. When given an opportunity to understand, all students can become proficient on some level. Some students will still be better than others but no student should be left behind.