Morning Sound MAMA
Multiplying Joyful Days
Informal Math in the Early Years
100+ Math Things To Do
printable pdf version
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Build a birdhouse
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Play sudoku
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Learn to read music
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Play store
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Make an addition grid
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Read Life of Fred
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Play Tangrams
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Play Q-Bitz, Blokus or Kanoodle
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Visit livingmath.net
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Try a math worksheet just for fun
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Explore Mr. R’s World of Math
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Do a number puzzle or a dot-to-dot
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Make a multiplication grid
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Hold a paper map while driving
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Watch the musical arrangement of pi
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Plan a trip, real or imagined
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Do the family taxes together
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Play Sorry or Snakes and Ladders
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Sign up for Bedtime Math
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Sit down with a logic puzzle book
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Visit Yummy Math.com
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Add up the money in your piggy bank
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Read a math book for preschoolers like Stuart Murphy’s Mathstart paperbacks
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Plan to save up for something important, chart your progress
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Play Mobi (bananagrams for math equations)
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Bake muffins, double the recipe and freeze for later
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Play Dutch Blitz or War or another sequencing card game
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Do a scavenger hunt with a list of heights or weights and find matching items
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Play hopscotch
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Watch John Bennett’s Ted Talk on Why (higher) Math Instruction is Unnecessary
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Race to find certain page numbers in a book, hymnbook, or Bible
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Play dominoes (preschool) or Mexican Train dominoes (whole family)
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Leave the kids with a number problem at bedtime to puzzle over
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Play Mastermind or Guess Who (youngers)
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Stack blocks (babies) or play Jenga (whole family)
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Double your favorite supper recipe and bring half to someone who needs it
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Look at the next month on the calendar and talk over your plans
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Memorize your phone number(s) and write them out
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Take a jar full of coins and roll them, figure out how much they are worth
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Follow the temperature throughout the day, plot it on a graph
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Get out the number fridge magnets and line them up
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Make a chore chart, jobs down the side, days of the week across the top
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Read Mathemagic (old Childcraft book, vol. 13)
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Clap and dance to your favorite music, count time
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Find your home address on a map, count the miles from the US border
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Plan your day in the morning and watch for certain times on the clock
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Notice comparative language in your Bible time (eg. “last shall be first”)
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Play Qwirkle or Rummikub to practice grouping and patterns
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Make stick figures of the family groups you know, add them up
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Plant a square foot garden, measure how many square feet you have to work with
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Weigh each family member and add up your collective weight
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Learn to play chess, maybe with Kasparov’s “Checkmate”
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Play with a balance scale, or make one, to compare items
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Make pizzas, use pi to calculate surface area, and cheese needed per square inch
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Read a Sir Cumference book or other math story
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Play restaurant, make menus, pay and calculate a tip
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Make patterns with a spirograph game, color them systematically
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Sing together and use “percussion” instruments to keep time
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Play Greed, Pass the Pigs or other game with high stakes
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Read a math biography, like Odd Boy Out: Young Albert Einstein by Don Brown
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Follow your favorite athlete and keep track of their stats
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Fill glasses to differing heights and play music
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Watch the speedometer as you drive and estimate distances and arrival time
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Read Mathematicians Are People, Too by Luetta and Wilbert Reimer
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Play Monopoly, Risky Business, Stock Ticker or other money game
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Build a wood project from the Family Handyman to help organize your house
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Follow a recipe to make a refreshing summer drink
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Play cribbage and never forget which numbers add up to 15!
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Plan a small business project, build or cook something to sell, keep track of expenses
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Calculate the square footage of your bedroom, your whole house and your yard
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Talk about the math symbols (+, -, =, x, etc.) and what they mean
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Make a scale drawing of your grandparent’s house
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Dive into TJEd Math with the “how to teach” resources
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Figure out how long it would take to get to the store walking, biking, driving
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Use a slide whistle to experiment with length affecting tone
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Add up the ages of your family members or find differences in birth years
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Figure out your GPS coordinates related to lines of latitude and longitude
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Use your timeline to talk about numbers going backwards below zero
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Time each family member on a race and compare finishing times
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Use balloons to measure lung capacity with a volume of a sphere
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Buy a watch and learn to use it to arrive on time
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Make cookies in all the geometrical shapes
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Read A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe to inspire teaching
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Learn about circle patterns or anything else at Math Delights
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Take a math joke book out of the library
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Play with measuring cups and spoons and playdough
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Use a protractor to make circles to cut out and make into snowflakes
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Make a list of all the math words you can think of
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Read the story of Florence Nightingale or another math biography
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Try some exercises at Khan Academy just for fun
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Play a dice game like Yahtzee or Mousetrap (with a plunger)
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Count the amount of time until an event in months, weeks, days, hours, minutes
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Play Scotland Yard, a spy mapping game
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Play Rack-O or Uno or Sequence or another sequencing game
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Get more game suggestions (with the skill learned) with this pdf list
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Memorize the 7 levels of math learning from the pyramid at TJEd.org
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Learn about factor visualization and play factor dominoes
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Estimate the number of items in a jar, start small, and the closest gets them
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Do a Bible word study on counting or numbers
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Read a math adventure chapter book, like The Phantom Tollbooth or Rithmatist
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Enjoy knowing “why”! (go to TJEd.org, scroll to "3. Article "what's math got to do with it?")
This track will play Multiplying Joyful Days: Informal Math in the Early Years
from MACHS 2019 Conference as soon as this audio is available.
Sources and Resources
Games
Numbers and counting
Dominos
Dutch blitz
Mobi
Sequence
Mousetrap (plunger)
Yahtzee
Greed
Monopoly
Cribbage
Racko
Risky Business
Poker
Uno
Pass the Pigs
Mille Bournes
Rummikub
Shoot a Loop
Stock Ticker
Patterns and logic
Jenga
Chess
Tangoes
Kanoodle
Blokus
Mastermind
Q-bitz
Guess Who
Scotland Yard
Paper puzzle books
Sudoku
Qwirkle
Battleship
Books and Book Lists
Teaching Books
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Ignite the Fire Terri Camp
A Thomas Jefferson Education Oliver deMille
Dumbing Us Down (and others) John Taylor Gatto
Teaching the Trivium Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn
"History and Research on the Teaching of Math"
appendix to Teaching the Trivium Bluedorn
(why we don't start formal math until age 10 or more)
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Kids Books
The Phantom Tollbooth Norton Juster
Mathemagic- one of the childcraft series
Champions of Mathematics biographies of mathematicians
Bedside Book of Geometry Mike Askew and Sheila Ebbutt
Life of Fred read aloud math curriculum
Mathstart paperbacks Stuart J. Murphy
Links to More Book Lists
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Really decent picture book synopses
https://themidlifemamas.com/stories-about-math/
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This listing is categorized, if you like that
https://www.livingmath.net/reader-index
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https://denisegaskins.com/living-math-books/
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Also a huge categorized list
https://mamajenn.com/livingmathbooks/topics/
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TJEd recommendations- the whole site is chock full
https://www.tjed.org/resources-2/classics/math-classics-kids/
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Teaching Resource Links
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TJEd.org
http://www.tjed.org/2015/03/tjed-math/
Intro to the 7 levels of Math
https://www.tjed.org/2015/04/major-revolution-teaching-math/
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Andrew Pudewa recordings from MACHS conference 2011
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musical arrangement of pi
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Raymond and Dorothy Moore philosophy
https://www.moorehomeschooling.com/articles/synopsis
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Synopsis of Benezet's Story
https://lauragraceweldon.com/2014/11/11/math-instruction-versus-natural-math-benezets-example/
TED talk John Bennett- why math instruction is unnecessary
https://youtu.be/xyowJZxrtbg
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Effects of GPS navigation on brain function
https://www.psypost.org/2017/03/study-gps-navigation-switches-off-parts-brain-otherwise-used-48464
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