I tried out some Masyu puzzles the other day with a group of students. These are a new-to-me puzzle that I learned about from Jeffrey Wanko. Usually, I’m drawn to logic puzzles involving numbers. (I’ve posted about KenKen, Futoshiki, Hashi, Shikaku, and Paint by Number puzzles before.) But, these have no numbers involved. Actually, there …
Puzzles
Last Friday, I pulled a this make it even brain teaser out for Figure It Out! Friday. I found a puzzle called “Make It Even” in The Moscow Puzzles: 359 Mathematical Recreations by Boris A. Kordemsky. The book is published by Dover, so it’s super affordable! I’ve found numerous puzzles I want to try out …
How do y’all feel about KenKen puzzles? Love them? Good. Me too. Today I want to post about a program that you may not be aware of. It’s called KenKen Classroom. The premise is simple. Visit the link. Give them your e-mail. Then, watch your inbox every Friday for free KenKen puzzles that are formatted …
Last week, I attended my first Math Teachers’ Circle meeting of the 2015-2016 school year. This is my third year to be involved in a circle, and it’s been a ton of fun. We got to experience spherical geometry using balloons and sharpies, but that’s a post for another day. Today, I want to talk …
One of the things I love most about the #MTBoS is that for every idea I blog, I seem to get three or more ideas back in return. Recently, Christine Mishra left a comment on an old post from 2013 with a link to a (new-to-me) logic puzzle: Futoshiki. Christine thinks these would be awesome …
Petals Around the Rose is a fun and frustrating dice-based brainteaser. It makes a great activity for the first week of school in math class! I first learned about Petals Around the Rose from Annie Forest in her blog post on 8 Ideas for the Last Minutes of Math Class. Usually, I read a post …
Back in August, a sixth grade girl who attends my church presented me with a brain teaser that her teacher had shared with her class. Since Thursdays in my classroom start off with a brain teaser, I decided to share this brain teaser with my students. It’s the type of brain teaser that is EXTREMELY …
One of the things I’ve most liked about introducing my students to new logic puzzles is that they’ve been new to me as well! I was initially hesitant to try the hashiwokakero puzzles with my students because they sounded scary. I learned about these puzzles from reading the slides from Jeffrey Wanko’s NCTM presentation. You …
This 5 piece square puzzle made the perfect challenge to give to my math students for Brain Teaser Thursday. It has been a lot harder than I anticipated to come up with a different brain teaser for every Thursday. Now, I love brain teasers, but there’s a definite difference between the brain teasers I find …
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 …
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 …
I love using IQ Circle Puzzles in my classroom on the first day of school to teach my students about the importance of having a growth mindset. IQ Circle Puzzles are meant to be used as a party favor. My mom happened upon this entire box of these puzzles at a garage sale for a …
One of the most memorable problems I got to work through at the OGAP (Oklahoma Geometry and Algebra Project) workshop I attended was the Camel Crossing the Desert Puzzle. A week before attending the workshop, I had saw the problem in a copy of Discovering Advanced Algebra. I read the problem, and I thought it …
I love logic puzzles! I love puzzles that make me think, that challenge me. I want a puzzle that’s not impossible and not immediately solvable. It needs to be somewhere in the middle. The other day, I was looking for some puzzles to keep my statistics students busy. I had been administering standardized tests all …
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 …