What are Shikaku Puzzles? Shikaku Puzzles are a geometric-based logic puzzle from Japan. I was first introduced to them from a tweet from Bowen Kerins. The goal of a shikaku puzzle is to subdivide the grid into rectangles (and squares) so that the number in each rectangle refers to the area of that rectangle. Only …
Number Puzzles
I heart logic puzzles. Give me a long road trip where I’m not the one driving, and I’ll probably be doing one of two things when I’m awake: reading or working logic puzzles. One of my favorite logic puzzles is one I learned about in high school. My high school calculus teacher would leave us …
I recently gave this four fours challenge activity during the last few weeks of the school year. We got off to a rough start, but it ended up being a super engaging and enjoyable math puzzle! My students took their end-of-instruction exam on April 13th. That was two weeks ago, and we still have three …
31-derful is fun and easy-to-implement group problem solving activity that is a perfect activity for the first day or week of school. The only supplies needed to implement this activity is a deck of playing cards for each group. I used the 31-derful activity with my Algebra 1 students for the first day of school. …
I want to share the Digit Cells Puzzle I had my students tackle on my first ever day of being a teacher. Day 1 went pretty much as I had planned. I explained the concept of bell work to my students. I don’t think any of them have ever had a class before where they were …