Month: November 2014

Ice Skating Math in Palo Alto

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Fall is in the air and what better way to celebrate the crisp, cool weather than ice skating in Palo Alto? There are a few ice skating rinks in the area and I recommend you check out Winter Lodge in Palo Alto or Nazareth Ice Oasis in Redwood City for some cold, icy fun! Your child is bound to enjoy ice skating so why not take them skating with their friends and throw in some ice skating related math problems beforehand?

Fun Math Activities in Palo Alto

Photo from the Palo Alto Winter Lodge

Here are some ice skating math problems for your kids to practice:

1. You decide to go skating at Winter Lodge in Palo Alto with your friend and mom. One-time admission costs $10 per person and skate rental is $4 per pair of skates.

a) Your mom brings her old ice skates and doesn’t need to rent a pair, but you and your friend need to rent skates. Including the admission fee, how much would you have to pay for the three of you to go skating?

b) The Winter Lodge has special value packages and you’re not sure if you should buy the Convenience package instead of one-time admission. The Convenience package is worth 10 admissions and costs $95. How much money would you save if you bought the Convenience package?

2. Starbucks is right around the corner and you decide to stop at Starbucks for some post-skating refreshments. You order a hot cocoa with whipped cream for $3.75. Your friend orders a tea for $2.50 and your mom orders a latte for $4.15. If your mother hands the cashier a $20 bill, how much change should she get back?

For more math-related fun, check out www.mathnasium.com/paloalto-menlopark.

Graphing Math Problems in Menlo Park

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The Great Graph Contest will leave your Menlo Park child with a burning desire to start asking questions, gathering data, and making graphs. Loreen Leedy’s, The Great Graph Contest is a cute and creative way to make graphing enjoyable for your kid. Have your children compete to make the best graphs that meet the three criteria (they must be mathematically accurate, neat, and creative). Obviously, it will end in a tie! Have them mix up the types of graphs they make just like they do in the story- pie charts, bar graphs, venn diagrams, etc.- there are many possibilities. The Great Graph Contest is better suited for younger children who are beginning to learn about graphs. This book is an ideal way to get your child to start practicing the graphing they are learning in school. I would recommend this book to all young kids in the Palo Alto and Menlo Park areas. Grab your kid a copy of The Great Graph Contest and watch with wonder as they begin to be more inquisitive and gather data to graph. Watch the work of a little mathematician in the making!

Image from loreenleedy.com

 

For more problems and information about math in and book recommendations, check out Palo Alto – Menlo Park Mathnasium’s website.

Bedtime Math in Palo Alto

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Bedtime Math 2 by Laura Overdeck is by far my favorite children’s math book, especially for kids in Palo Alto! If you only buy one math book, this is the one to get! Despite the title of the book, you can practice the math in this book any time of day! The interesting questions posed in the book with get your child excited about math and ready to solve as many of the problems in this book as they have time for. There are several questions on the page with the answers at the bottom of the page so you can check your children’s answers. The book is broken up into exciting chapters where all of the questions in the chapter fit the chapters’ topic. For example, there is a chapter called ‘What’s in you?’ that asks questions related to the human body. At the end of the book, there is a brief overview of the mathematical concepts covered in each set of questions. These overviews are broken up into age groups making this book suitable for children of most ages. Your child will be ecstatic to open this book and go through the questions. Who knows, this book could easily become your child’s favorite bedtime story! Head over to the Palo Alto Public Library or Keplers book store in Menlo Park to pick up this fantastic math book.

 

Image from archimedesnotebook.blogspot.com

For more problems and information about math in and book recommendations, check out Palo Alto – Menlo Park Mathnasium’s website.

Evens and Odd Math in the Silicon Valley

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An interesting story is a sure way to get your child to remember the differences between even and odd numbers. Even and odd numbers are very important for your child to master for school in Silicon Valley. That is exactly what Kathryn Cristaldi does in her book Even Steven and Odd Todd. In Even Steven’s life, everything is even! That is, until his cousin Odd Todd spends the summer in Steven’s house. Even Steven turns a ghastly green color every time an odd number comes into his life. He felt ill when there were eleven nuts on his ice cream. Even Steven’s garden was even! He decided to enter it in a perfect garden contest. He could not control his anger upon waking to see one odd row of cactuses in his garden that Odd Todd had planted. Odd Todd was messing up Steven’s evenness!

When the contest judge came to Even Steven’s garden, he loved the garden and proclaimed Steven the winner! The prize was full of even numbers which is suiting for Steven. Could you imagine this happening in the Silicon Valley? At the end of the awesome story, there are four methods of checking whether numbers are even and odd. This book is the perfect mix of entertainment and math for your young child. I recommend this book to all young children in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area.

Image from closingthegapinacuteoutfit.blogspot.com