7 GREAT BOOKS ABOUT MATH Books about math provide added educational perks, including language arts exposure and stimulation of the imagination. In fact, many students benefit when math is removed from its classroom context and brought to life—either in real-life situations or in wacky, magical settings. Your child is sure to get extra dose of math help with these selections. “The Greedy Triangle,” by Marilyn Burns, tells the story of a cute, colorful triangle that seeks the help of a “shapeshifter” to morph into other shapes. Burns’ storytelling will introduce your child to polygons and quadrilaterals in the forms of everyday objects, making the book a fun primer to basic geometry. “Arithmetic the Easy Way,” by Edward Williams and Katie Prindle, may not be the most exciting of math books, but it is potentially the most helpful. They don’t call it the “Easy Way” series for nothing. This book, complete with reference tables and chapters covering math fundamentals from addition to measurements, breaks it down clearly and is the ideal supplemental math tool. “The Grapes of Math: Mind Stretching Math Riddles,” by Greg Tang, challenges your child to 16 math puzzles that will encourage him to use mental tricks to derive solutions. Tang’s creative approach—using poems to present the riddles and pictures of food, animals or more to illustrate the stories—shows students that math is more than memorizing multiplication tables. “The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure,” by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, tells the whimsical story of a number devil with a penchant for renaming common math terms (numbers that can be divided only by themselves and one are not prime numbers, but rather, “prima donnas”). Your middle school child will find the magical land and its characters funny—and may not even realize he’s learning math concepts in the process. “The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat,” by Theoni Pappas, relies on the same recipe for making math fun: placing math concepts, including the binary system and fractals, in a creative context with a cat who loves to explore. Penrose’s adventures are followed by simple activities. “Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland: A Math Adventure,” by Cindy Neuschwander, one of a series of four Sir Cumference books, uses clever puns and fantasy to make basic geometry concepts appealing to both children and adults. In this story, the character Radius must use a circular medallion (protractor) to rescue a king. Your child can follow along with his own circular medallion included with the book. “Algebra to Go: A Mathematics Handbook,” by Andrew Kaplan (editor) and the Great Source Education Group Staff, is ideal for older children embarking on algebra. With clear instruction that throws light on sometimes difficult concepts, this book can also serve as a refresher course for your child—or you! By Christine Tyler Worksheets K-3 1. Fill in the missing numbers: 4, ___, 6, 7, 8, ___. 2. Sally picks three flowers. Bobby picks seven. How many did they pick all together? 3. 0 + 8 + 0 = 4. 5 dollars, 2 nickels, 3 pennies, 2 quarters and 1 dime equals ___ cents. 5. Fill in the blank with >, < or = : 193 ___ 201. 6. 6 hundreds, 2 tens and 4 ones = ___. 7. Write as a decimal: 2/10 4-8 1. What is the place value of the bold number? 449 2. Write the numeral: seventy thousand, one hundred thirty-five 3. (80 x 40) + (90 ÷ 9) = 4. Find the prime factorization of 74. 5. 72% of 50 6. 31 + 39 = 24 + 7 + y 7. 2b = 21.4 High School 1. What is the value of (x + y)(x + y) if xy = -3 and x2 + y2 = 10? 2. 0.7x < 1.4 – 0.3x 3. 14 – 5x > 2x + 3 4. Solve using the quadratic formula: 2y2 – 5y = -3 5. Find the equation of the line containing the given point and having the given slope: (-5, -6), m = 2 6. Find the equation of the line that contains the given pair of points: (3, -4) and (-3, 4) Answers K-3 1. 5, 9 2. ten flowers 3. 8 4. 573 5. 193<201 6. 624 7. 0.2 4-8 1. tens 2. 70,135 3. 3210 4. 2, 37 5. 36 6. y = 39 7. b = 10.7 High School 1. 4 2. {x|x < 1.4} 3. {x|x < 11/7} 4. 1, 1.5 5. y = 2x + 4 6. y = -4/3x