I do enjoy puzzles and the summer break offers time for more! A job for the holidays is checking and updating links to such resources. I have now incorporated a series of pages, Puzzles & Games on this blog, available from the top menu. All resources have been checked and there are many new additions in all categories. Further additions will be added over the next week or two.

To highlight just a few of this large collection, Algebra includes the lovely SolveMe mobiles puzzles.

Or for a rather different approach, try Shuttle Mission Workshop from Math Playground, here students build and solve their own visual math puzzles. Play Shuttle Mission Pro first to practise.

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Nrich features on many pages including reading; Nrich has many excellent articles on the use of games in the classroom; hence a Reading page.

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On Number, Math Playground, PEMDAS Exhibit provides great practice for order of operations. Touch an operation to form that part of the operation.

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On Geometry of course follow Catriona Agg who regularly posts new puzzles and has made her collection of screenshots freely available.

Following each puzzle, you can find a discussion on the puzzle. Have a look at this puzzle and discussion for example.

In response to this puzzle, you can see various solutions including an Autograph file created by Rob Smith. Rob has this up to change both squares and you can move also move a point on the smaller square.

Another brilliant Geometry puzzle author is Ed Southall who has made 40 puzzles available to celebrate his 40th birthday; he has also provided slides for teachers. Check his Geometry Cheat Sheet.

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A new category is Probability and Statistics games…

The collection includes from Cambridge PhD student, Omar Wagih ‘Guess the Correlation‘, a rather addictive game with a purpose – Omar Wagih is collecting the data on the guesses collected and using it to analyse how we perceive correlations in scatter plots. Select About to read the rules and further details.

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Another new category – Underground Maths, the page includes several resources on puzzles and games from Underground Maths

From Underground Maths try Equation Sudoku for example.

We can write down equations:
c+g+k=17

f+g+a =19

m+k+c =16

and so on.

As always on Underground Maths we have suggestions and a complete solution as well as printable/supporting materials.

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Index

• Reading
• Collections
• Puzzles
• Logic
• Vocabulary
• Nim
• Counters
• Tables
• Number
• Algebra
• Geometry
• Probability & Statistics
• Underground Maths

A Back to School collection of activities from Transum Mathematics was a reminder of many activities I like and a source of some new discoveries. Looking at the Develop Your Memory suggestions, I noted Number Recall something which I think I’ll try with Year 7 when we look at Statistics. It is often said that the average person can remember 7 digit numbers; the Transum activity allows a choice of the number of digits so we’ll see how good our memories are! I rather like the Kim’s Game activity here too which led me to a collection of Kim’s Games on Transum including Angle Theorem Kim’s Game, something to try perhaps when reviewing Circle Theorems.

In fact, Transum has a whole collection of memory activities, the collection includes the various Kim’s game activities and many more. There are several pairs games, note Venn Diagram Pairs, which offers a choice of five activities including the traditional pairs game. We could also try the Formulae to Remember activities.

On the subject of pairs games, you can also find some on Nrich, try Shapely Pairs for example, where students turn over two cards and can keep the cards if they can draw a triangle with both properties. Quadrilateral cards are also available and there are further questions to think about. Or try a game of Statement Snap, where you will need to know about number properties.

We have more choices of math memory games – Mathisfun has a collection too, a useful index is provided of HTML5 Math and Logic games.

You might want to make your own Pairs game, I think some A level ones could be useful!
Try this (free) PowerPoint template on TES.