Ask HN: Cool math-topics for small children?

2 points by a-saleh 6y ago ↗ HN

For some time I am pondering to start something like a math-club for my daughter and her friends, in the spirit of Zvonkin's Math from 3 to 7 [1]

Thing is, creating math-puzzles is hard work so I'd like to know if some of you have resources you'd use :)

My 5 year old seems to like when I discuss math with her, but when I was looking at my local library, I mostly found materials either for older kids (ie. teaching them to solve systems of linear equations with word puzzles after they already know addition and multiplication) or these were really focus on the drill of counting numbers, and that seemed boring. The best book I so far found in a bookshop was Bedtime Math [3], because it at least has interesting trivia ccompanying the word problems, and some are appropriate for a pre-schooler. But it still is mostly counting.

We both liked the story of exponential (factorial?) growth in Anno's mysterious multiplying jar [2] (damn, I have to comb through the rest of those suggestions on that page)

My goal is mostly to puzzle and entertain so if you have anything you have used, I'd like to know :)

[1] http://www.msri.org/people/staff/levy/files/MCL/Zvonkin.pdf [2] https://www.mathsthroughstories.org/annos-mysterious-multiplying-jar.html [3] http://bedtimemath.org/bedtime-math-a-fun-excuse-to-stay-up-late/

2 comments

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jerome-jh 6y ago ↗

I have daughters 6 and 8 years old. When talking about math with them, it mostly revolves around arithmetic calculus. But then there are plenty of tricks that can be learnt by doing calculations in ones head. Maybe it is not very fashionable these days, but calculating in ones head certainly is a good training and is often a disguised way of doing factoring/expanding.

gus_massa 6y ago ↗

When my daughter was young, she played Sudoku a lot. It's good for reasoning an it's fun. It's important to use the "no guessing" rule, she only could write what she was sure (what she can prove :) ). Later, when she understand the difference between a deduction and a guess, she could solve the more difficult version that need some local guess.

She played the 6x6 and the 9x9 versions. Once, I noticed that she was applying the (informal) rules to deduct the numbers in the "wrong" order in the 6x6 version. After playing a few 6x6 games myself, I (re)discover that some rules are more useful in the 6x6 version and other rules are more useful in the 9x9 version. So the best order to apply the deduction rules is different and she was right.