Favorite Resources

Welcome to my collection of my favorite resources for math learning!

Math Books

  • Life of Fred books – Orderly math progression wrapped in a story that is silly and engaging.  The problems are not repetitive and are often also infused with elements of the story.
  • Calculus By and For Young People (pdf book) – Great for accelerated math learners, but also a playful and fascinating way to master fractions and introduce functions. (read more)
  • The Number Devil (book)
  • I haven’t tried this yet, but I ran across Balance Benders (book) and it looks great!  It’s a collection of those equation solving puzzles that use balanced balances with different shaped objects.
  • Mathematics: A Human Endeavor – This book is amazing.   It presumes nothing more than fluency with arithmetic from the learner, but covers a range of topics that span pre-algebra to advanced algebra.  I highly recommend this resource for anyone in middle-school or high school level mathematics. *Learning Ally has an audio version of the 3rd edition

Online math resources

  • Alcumus – An interactive collection of interesting problems drawn from math competitions.  A good source of math tasks that lend themselves to multiple paths to the solution and clever shortcuts.  You do need to create a free account to use this resource, but it’s easy.
  • Math Kangaroo – I’m always on the look out for sources of interesting math questions and these sample questions from the Math Kangaroo international math competition hit the spot quite nicely.  Not only are they engaging, fun and challenging, but the different levels span skill levels from first grade through high school level.
  • Imaginary Numbers are Real – A captivating video series with an accompanying pdf workbook.  This series tells the story of the development of imaginary and complex numbers with delightful historical tidbits woven in.  It takes the learner on a delightful and fascinating journey of inquiry that covers polynomials, the quadratic formula, and of course, plenty of work with the complex plane.
  • Desmos graphing calculator – I use this all the time.  I especially love that when you graph a function containing a constant you can animate a “slider” for the constant and see how the graph changes as that constant changes.
  • Desmos classroom activities – Engaging math activities mostly for middle school and high school level math.  Designed for a classroom but can also sometimes be used for small groups or individual learners.

3 Act Math Tasks

These are what word problems always should have been.  Learners see a puzzling or intriguing piece of media and ask questions about it.  They then make guesses about a target question, ask for additional information to solve the problem and create their own solution.  Lastly, they get to see how the real-life situation worked out and compare it to their prediction.

I use Dan Meyer’s collection of 3-acts frequently and I just discovered this collection from whenmathhappens.com.

Here are some I’ve used or plan to use:

Logic puzzles

  • Krazydad.com (puzzles website)

Manipulatives and Classroom Tools

  • Base 10 Toothpicks – Even better than base 10 blocks.  More cost efficient and compact too!

Recommended by Others

Here are some resources I’ve had recommended to me, but haven’t had a chance to test out much myself.

  • A parent recommended this curriculum set from the Center For Innovation in Mathematics Teaching.  Still exploring it, but it looks pretty great!
  • Olabs – Digital content such as simulations and animations for math and science
  • Daily Challenge – Math Olympiad coach Po-Shen Lo created this resource for middle school learners to take their math to the next level