November 2022
Welcome to EFM's November Newsletter!
News
EFM Mobile App in Spanish I am very pleased to announce that our free mobile app for Android phones now includes having all of our materials in English or Spanish at the flick of the language switch. Download this most recent version from the Google Play Store and check it out!
Translations Thanks to the hard work of a new translator, our five chapters of games, puzzles, activities, and investigations are now available in a good, human-translated French version. With the addition of three volunteer translators, we have also begun a long overdue translation into Japanese. If you are fluent in a language that you would like to see the EFM materials in, please contact me.
Activities for Educators We now have 40 Puzzles of the Week and 20 Games for the Classroom available for testing out on our Activities for Educators page. Please try them and let me know of your experiences. We are looking for educators to be part of an ongoing testing process. If you would be interested in helping us improve this program with your feedback and suggestions, as well as receiving beta test early versions, please contact me!
More Math Puzzles
Last month I talked about the value and challenges of using math puzzles in early math education. I featured the site Play With Your Math and presented several of their 26 puzzles. This month I continue this discussion by highlighting the 86 puzzle topics of FUNDAPROMAT. Their headquarters is in Panama, and their mission is to “change the world’s perception so that one and all can experience mathematics as accessible, relevant and inherently joyous.”
Finding the Puzzles on the FUNDAPROMAT site can take a bit of non-obvious searching (go to the Jamborees page and then go to the activities link). However, if you click on the link I just provided, you’ll go straight there. The other challenge, at least for linguistically limited folks like me, is that their puzzles are in Spanish (thank you machine translation). I am told that English translations are in the works and should be available in the near future.
They have nine 2-person games and 77 puzzles. Each activity is presented as a set of 15 to 30 brief slides. They start off with gentle explanations and first problems, and then go through a sequence of slides that gradually become more difficult.
They have lots of familiar activities to which they have added their own imaginative variations: Number Scrambler (3) Nim (5, 27, 45, 53), Tangrams (8, 44, 60), KenKen (10), Sudoku (10, 39, 63), Sprouts (15), SET (24), Letter Substitution Puzzles (36, 54), Map Coloring (38), Broken Calculator (51), Bridges of Konigsburg (57), Dots and Boxes (64), Towers of Hanoi (73), Othello (78), Mastermind (83), and the 24 Game (86). The numbers in parentheses are their activity numbers.
In addition to those, here are a few of their less familiar activities for you to have fun with.
Coin Flipping #6 and #76
This puzzle is based on a simple idea. Start with a simple grid of squares, some of which may already have a coin in them. A new coin may be added to any empty square, and it may be placed heads up or heads down. When a new coin is placed, flip over any coin already on the board that shares an edge with the new coin.
When the grid is completely filled, the goal is to end up with a board all of whose coins are heads up or heads down.
Have fun experimenting with different board sizes and different starting configurations for the coins.
Sujiku Puzzles #25
When they are filled in, these puzzles have nine squares with numbers, and the sum of each group of 2 by 2 numbers is in the circle in the middle of the 2 by 2. Typically, the nine numbers are the numbers from 1 to 9, but you can use any nine you like. For example, to reduce the numbers and sums involved for your child, you might use the numbers 0 to 8.
The puzzles are very easy to make for your child. First, fill in the nine squares any way you like. Then put their sums in the circles. Finally, leave out most of the numbers in the squares and give the puzzle to your child. The more numbers you leave in, the easier it will be. Here are two versions of this example, the first is much easier to solve than the second.
Stacking Hats #62
The challenge for these puzzles is to stack a collection of hats using some simple rules. The rules are: 1) you have to move all of the hats in a stack together, 2) the hats must move exactly as far as the number of hats in the stack, and 3) the hats can only be moved to the originally provided places.
The first challenge is to move these six hats so that they become one stack. The second part of that challenge is to see whether the final stack of six hats can end up in any of the six places.
The next challenge involves introducing a smaller blue hat as one of the hats. Is it possible to move these six hats into one stack so that the blue hat is kept on top? The last part of this challenge is to see which starting places for the blue hat produce which possible ending places for the stack.
Square Sums and Products #66
This last puzzle is one of the easiest to create. Start with a 2 by 2 square, fill in the four empty spots with numbers, and to the right of each row and beneath each column write the respective sums. Finally, remove the numbers in the 2 by 2 section and give the puzzle to your child.
Make these puzzles easier by giving additional information. For example, for this puzzle you could say all the numbers are different and they are from 1 to 8.
For some variations, use multiplication instead of addition, or for 2 by 2 puzzles, you can also use difference if you like.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them my way. I would enjoy the opportunity to chat with you. Also, if you are interested in collaborating with us or supporting us in any fashion, I would love to talk with you about ways we can work together!
Chris Wright
November 18, 2022
Chris@EarlyFamilyMath.org
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Early Family Math is a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, #87-4441486.