Trending Resource: 40+ Ideas for the First Week of School
I created this set of four set notation puzzles to give my Algebra 2 students practice with set notation. I sadly didn’t end up getting to use them this year due to COVID restrictions. Each of the sets puzzles features a half-sheet of paper with four sets (A, B, C, and D). There are 15…
I’m excited about these Connect the Shapes Puzzles from Tanya Grabarchuk. Following the lines of the grid, connect each pair of identical symbols with a single continuous line. The lines should cover all nodes of the shape. The lines may not cross each other. I plan on using these puzzles with my students inside my…
Looking for a challenge? Check out this page of Make It Pythagorean Puzzles. Insert the same digit (in any manner of your choosing) to each side of the triangle to form a right triangle. I ran across these interesting puzzles in Golf on the Moon by Dick Hess (Dover Publications).
I love using X Puzzles to introduce factoring quadratics. These puzzles are also known as sum and product puzzles since the goal of the puzzle is to find the two numbers that have a given sum and product. Years ago, I found a set of 5 pages of X Puzzles. I can no longer find…
I am really liking these quadratic area puzzles from Chritsopher (Bow Tie Teacher on twitter) that are posted for free on TES. They are inspired by Naoki Inaba‘s Area Maze puzzles with a quadratic spin on things. For next year, I think I would like to do some sort of activity at the beginning of…
Today I want to highlight a collection of Balancing Act Puzzles from Heather Sparks. Heather is a bit of a legend in the world of Oklahoma math teaching. She was the 2009 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year. If you teach middle school math, her website is worth a browse. I am positive you will find…
Today I’m sharing two mathematical puzzles with you that Ivan Moscovich calls Pattern 15 and Pattern 30. Earlier this school year, I browsed a bunch of puzzle books looking for puzzles to post in my classroom that didn’t involve manipulating pieces. This was weird for me because I was intentionally trying to avoid the exact…
Today I want to share a new puzzle I’ve been playing with for the last few days: Naoki Inaba‘s Number Ball Puzzles. The other day, I set out to try to bring some semblance of order to my puzzles folder on my laptop. This is the place on my computer where I keep PDFs of…
Hidoku Puzzles (also known as hidato puzzles) have been one of my go-to puzzles in my file cabinet of puzzles for several years now. I have had great success with getting students interested in these puzzles who haven’t been interested in other logic puzzles like Sudoku or KenKen. Somehow, these puzzles have never made an…
Looking for a tricky math challenge? You wouldn’t think a math task involving only addition and multiplication could be so tricky, but I think you’ll be surprised. Puzzle Source I first ran across Erich Friedman’s Plus Times Puzzles back in 2019. I have featured several of Erich’s puzzles on my blog before including Arrows Puzzle,…
Who is Naoki Inaba? Naoki Inaba is a prolific Japanese puzzle author of over 400 original logic puzzles. Inaba has a lovely website full of free PDF puzzles. The only issue is that the website is entirely in Japanese. His puzzles have been featured in both the New York Times and The Guardian. Since his…
This collection of 97 printable tangram puzzles will make it super-easy to implement tangram puzzles as a problem-solving activity in your classroom. What are Tangrams? Tangrams are a dissection puzzle which is believed to originate from imperial China. A set of tangrams consists of seven flat shapes which can be put together to form a…
I ran across an interesting vintage math puzzle on eBay recently. I’ve never heard of Tigo Puzzles, but I definitely want to know more now! The eBay listing is no longer active, but I did save the images posted by the seller. Apparently this book of Tigo Puzzles is based on Tigo, a unique new…
I’m really looking forward to using Amy Gruen’s Exponent Puzzles in my Algebra 2 class this year. I’ve already printed off a copy so I don’t forget to use them! These exponent puzzles are going to make the perfect introduction to logarithms!
The last time I taught Algebra 1, I used Step Puzzles by Naoki Inaba to introduce the idea of arithmetic sequences. I tweeted about it, but in the craziness of packing up my classroom and house to move last summer they never made it up on my blog. I was first introduced to the amazing…
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…
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…
I’m really pushing the box method this year in my Algebra 2 classes, so Christie Bradshaw’s area model puzzles were a perfect introduction to the box method before we jumped into factoring using the box method!
Yesterday, I shared about all the amazing things I learned/experienced as part of the Tulsa Math Teachers’ Circle Summer Immersion Workshop. As part of that post, I mentioned that I had created some factor tree puzzles after being inspired by the puzzles shared by Dr. Harold Reiter and the puzzle created by one of the…
These hidden equation puzzles challenge students to circle one symbol in each column to create a true mathematical equation. These make great dry erase puzzles!
These double letter puzzles from Serhiy Grabarchuk look simple, but they can be surprisingly tricky to solve!
Today I’m sharing some Triangular Numbers Posters with you. It’s January, and I’m still finding new things that need to go up on the walls of my classroom. It’s a bit of an obsession. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at my classroom! My Math Concepts class has been working on “That’s Logical” puzzles…
About a month ago, I was contacted by the Grabarchuk Family who are the creators of Strimko logic puzzles to see if I would be interested in reviewing one of their new puzzle books. Being the puzzle lover that I am, I had to say YES! So, full disclosure: I received the book mentioned in…
This Evaluating Functions Spider Puzzle was the perfect practice activity for my Algebra 1 students. These spider puzzles are the creation of Andy Lutwyche, and they are a free download on TES. Andy has created spider puzzles for many other topics as well that are well worth checking out! I use these spider puzzles inside…
My math concepts students are slowly improving their integer skills. To aid in this process, we’ve been tackling an Integer Squares Math puzzle from Developing Mathematical Fluency at the start of every class period.
The activity I’m about to share isn’t super fancy or complex, but my students absolutely loved it. I had planned two activities for our 50 minute class period in Algebra 1 on reviewing measures of central tendency: this activity and another. We did this activity first, and my students did not want to move on…