Living Math with Playing Cards

An insight from our foray into living math:

Traditional Math –A complicated math concept learned or practiced with a workbook may likely result in tears of frustration.

Living Math –But that identical math concept learned or practiced with a game is likely to be embraced with genuine eagerness.

I’m again amazed at the simple reality of the power of motivation and packaging. We played another game from Family Math (a book) that included playing cards. Sprite was working math problems with an excitement, speed, and accuracy that was not there a week earlier when doing those same kinds of exercises printed in her workbook.

For more card game ideas, visit the wonderful Let’s Play Math blog.

I’m not ready to discard the textbook quite yet, but I am certainly committed to continuing this type of math education. I’ve purchased the intermediate (cycle 1) lesson plans from Julie at Living Math, and I’m pouring over them, trying to decide which of the multitude of recommended books to purchase. Her approach is literature based, and it seems that I’ll still need to add in living math games and exercises as well. It’s not as “open and go” as I had hoped, but it does offer a nice booklist and a basic outline of math history.

If any of you have experience with the Living Math materials, I’d love to hear how you used it.