Several years ago, I heard about the Let’s Make Squares activity from an OKMath Newsletter sent out by Christine Koerner. She recommended Let’s Make Squares as a great activity for the first week of school. I had already decided that I was going to do the 2s to 9s Challenge as my first day of …
Squares
Today I’m sharing a new puzzle with you called the 8 sticks puzzle. Yesterday, I bemoaned the loss of my classroom puzzle corner. I’ve been trying to come up with some ways to keep incorporating puzzles in my classroom in a pandemic-friendly manner. My favorite puzzles are the ones with pieces that students can manipulate. …
The Square in Square Puzzle is a creation of the brilliant Peter Grabarchuk. It is one of my weekly magnetic puzzles that never made it up on the blog this school year. Imagine that… You are given sixteen rectangles. Among these rectangles, only two can be placed next to one another to form a perfect …
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 …
In my last post, I shared the Square Pi Puzzle and mentioned that I was updating some older puzzles that have been long-time favorites of my students. Today, I want to share another updated puzzle, the 1-4-5 Square Challenge. I originally shared this puzzle on my blog in May 2015 which seems like an eternity …
I’m very excited about the Square the Shapes Puzzle (this week’s puzzle table selection) because it’s got some hidden mathematics involved in solving it that aren’t obvious at first glance. I find that my students are less likely to tackle the puzzle on the puzzle table when the math connection is blatantly obvious. This week’s …
Zukei puzzles are the brilliant creation of Naoki Inaba. Inaba has posted these puzzles for free on his website, but it can be a bit hard to navigate since everything is written in Japanese. You may have heard of Inaba from his popular area maze puzzles. Instructions for Solving Zukei Puzzles The instructions for the …