Today I want to share a connect the dots puzzle with you courtesy of Erich Friedman in Puzzle Box, Volume 2. If you love puzzles like this, you should definitely check out Erich’s Puzzle Palace which is chock-full of amazing puzzles. All three of the books in this series have been a lovely addition to my …
Digital Activities
This lovely exponent task is from Mathematics for the College Boards by Rich Barnett (Copyright 1967 AMSCO). Because each problem in the matching task involves the variable m and the numbers 2 and 3, the task really gets to the bottom of whether students understand the role played by exponents and coefficients. This is the same …
It’s a lazy Saturday morning that is turning out to be lazier than I had initially planned since I’m currently stuck on the couch with a sleeping baby on top of me. That means it’s the perfect time to share another puzzle that my students tackled recently on our magnetic puzzle wall (AKA dry erase …
Master the art of the squaring off puzzle! Rotate and arrange given rectangular pieces to create a perfect square, testing your problem-solving skills. Thanksgiving Break is here, and I am oh so grateful for these few days off. This year has felt like one long learning curve as I figure out what life looks like …
I’m excited to share with you the Big Magic Puzzle. I love magic square puzzles, but I’ve never done much more with them in my class then give out the occasional magic square puzzle worksheet. So, when I ran across a different-than-normal magic square puzzle in The Ultimate Clever Puzzle Book, I knew I had …
Today I’m sharing a puzzle I’m calling Nine Squares Puzzle. A few days ago, Shelli tweeted about needing more puzzles for next year since her advisory students will have already seen the ones she has used previously. This reminded me that I too will have this problem because my Pre-Calc classes will be made almost …
Recently, I was scrolling through pictures I had taken on my phone, and I realized that I never got around to blogging about the Kazu Sagashi Puzzles I used with my students back in April. I was introduced to this logic puzzle in 2016 when I discovered the amazing puzzles of Naoki Inaba. Inaba is …
I’m here today to share with you the Twelve Envelopes Puzzle. I’ve finally reached a point in the summer where my brain has started thinking about ideas for the new school year. Actually, I’ve been thinking about next year since around February or March, but I’ve finally stopped *just* thinking about next year and started …
Today I’m excited to share this Hidden Animals Puzzle with you from Frank Tapson. This year, I am teaching 4 sections of Algebra 2 and 2 sections of Pre-Calculus. Having four sections of one subject is always interesting because I find that keeping four different classes at approximately the same spot in the curriculum to …
I want to convince you why dividing polynomials using the box method is my favorite method for dividing polynomials. After taking a 2 year hiatus from teaching Algebra 2 to dabble in teaching physical science and chemistry, I’m back at it this year. One of the things I really missed about teaching Algebra 2 was …
Day one and two are in the books! I’ll share a bit more about what I did with my classes on the first two days in a later post, but I want to go ahead and share the mathematical challenge I used with my students on the first day since I have got several questions …
Today I’m sharing with you the Sum to Twenty Puzzle by Marcy Cook. In Math Concepts, we ran out of That’s Logical puzzles a few weeks ago, so I had to find a new source of daily warm-ups. Instead, I’ve started using puzzles from “THINK ABOUT IT! Mathematics Problems of the Day” by Marcy Cook. …
The idea for this building and naming polynomials activity started out like many of my ideas do. I start thinking about the topic I’m teaching, and I ask myself “What if…?” This week, the topic was polynomials, and the question I asked myself was “What if I could create some sort of puzzle for polynomials?” …
This week, I’m trying out the Arrows Puzzle which is a different sort of puzzle on the puzzle table. Instead of being a puzzle where students have to arrange various laminated pieces like I frequently use, this is a coloring puzzle. To make things easier on students, I placed the puzzle inside an 11 x …
Yesterday, I added the four seasons puzzle to our puzzle table. We’re currently working on a Valentine’s project that involves creating a Valentine for each teacher/staff member (total of 26) who works in our building (a combined middle school/high school). So, the puzzle table has been doubling as an arts/crafts table. If you look closely …
Just a quick puzzle post today to share the north east south west puzzle with you because it’s already past my bedtime! This has been a crazy week because I’ve been spending almost all of my spare time prepping for a 2.5 hour workshop I’m giving this Saturday on interactive notebooks. The participants will actually …
Today I’m sharing my first ever original puzzle. I’m calling it the Decorate the Tree Puzzle. It’s officially the first day of Christmas Break here in the Carter household. So far, I’ve celebrated by doing the standard dishes and laundry, watching a Christmas movie as well as silly get out of debt reality shows on …
Today I want to share with you the Pyramid Challenge Puzzle. Last week, we tackled the color square puzzle from Puzzle Box, Volume 1. This book is my current top recommendation for teachers who are looking to incorporate more puzzles into their classroom. Or, maybe you want a challenge yourself. What I love about this …
Today’s post about the Color Square Puzzle will probably be short because I’m currently battling a sore throat. I’ve got my fingers crossed that this is due to allergies and not an impending cold. Yesterday, I put out this week’s new puzzle. I have a table at the front of my room that is designated …
This function vs not a function card sort activity is the perfect way to assess whether or not students can apply the definition of a function to determine whether a relation is or is not a function. This card sort activity provides students practice classifying graphs, tables (both horizontal and vertical tables), ordered pairs, and …
Last week, I came across a fun perfect square puzzle. Place a set of numbers in a row such that adjacent pairs of numbers always sum to a perfect square. I decided to create a version of the perfect square puzzle for my students to try who finished their 9 weeks test early. To keep …
I love using the Blocko game to give students much needed practice with experimental and theoretical probability. This game also goes by the name “Beano.” I prefer to play it with linking cubes, so we call it Blocko. Algebra 1 is in the midst of our LAST unit of the year. With the stress and …
State testing has thrown my teaching off so much lately. I usually try to keep all of my Algebra 1 classes in the same place, but that just hasn’t been possible these past few weeks. Algebra 1 is currently working with scatter plots and regression. My 6th hour class finished super-early compared to my other …
Back before spring break, I tried out two new-to-me logic puzzles with my students. I already blogged about the Slants puzzles from Brain Bashers. Today, I want to blog about the Tents puzzles from Brain Bashers. These Tents puzzles can be found here on the Brain Bashers website. I created a one-page introduction with the …
In February, Mary Bourassa wrote a blog post about Skyscraper Puzzles. As soon as I read the post, I knew I needed to use this puzzle in my classroom. I even sent my husband a link, gushing about how amazing these puzzles were! The puzzles from the brainbashers.com website weren’t quite the right size to …