Math Monday: Queen’s Move & King’s Move
Students will explore a game between two players moving a chess Queen from place to place on a square grid. The Queen may move any number of spaces to the left, any number of spaces downward, and any number of spaces on the downward-left pointing diagonal. Each player takes turns using these moves. Whoever gets …
Math Monday: Mondrian Art Problem
It's time to become artists like Piet Mondrian!! Like Mondrian's art, we will decide on placing rectangles on a square canvas where the whole canvas is used. Our goal is to get the lowest Mondrian score, which we get by subtracting the area of the largest rectangle with the area of the smallest rectangle. The …
Math Monday: Ascending/Descending Numbers
Let's say we shuffle a set of cards from 1-9 and lay them down side by side. How many cards can we find that are ascending? How about cards that are descending? Javier Haro will explore with students how to find arrangements that have a certain amount of ascending and descending numbers. Zoom Link
Math Monday: Seeing Squares
This week we are playing a two-player game in a dotted arena! The winner is the first to have four dots that can be joined by straight lines to form a square. Keep in mind that squares can be any size, anywhere and can be tilted! Javier Haro will explore with students to find strategies …
Math Monday: The Race To 99
Starting with the number 1, how fast can we reach our goal using only addition? This week, we have a special guest, Joshua Zucker, that will be working with students to find strategies in racing to 99 and a bunch of other numbers (small and big) too! Zoom Link
Math Monday: Nurikabe
Let's create some islands in the classic game Nurikabe! We will be using a square grid with some numbered clues. With these clues, we must make our islands from connected white squares and a body of water from black squares. Keep in mind that we can't have any 2x2 square sections in our body of …
Math Monday: Wari (Prime Pips in Pots)
Based on the traditional game Wari, two players take turns by taking all the pips (or pieces) in a pot (circle) and placing one pip for each of the next pots until you run out. If the final pip lands in a pot with a prime number of pips, then you collect them all! The …
Math Monday: Kakuro
Kakuro is a puzzle with numbers where you are creating “numbered words”. These “words” are created by adding up numbers, from 1 through 9, to get specific numbers provided (shown either on the top or left of white squares). There is only one other rule to keep in mind—you cannot place a number more than …
Math Monday: Hare and Hounds
A pack of three Hounds trying to catch a Hare and the Hare is trying to get away from them! Starting on opposite sides of the board, two players (the three Hounds and the Hare) take turns moving toward each other. The Hounds must move toward the Hare (up, down, diagonally, and foward), but only …
Math Monday: Hitori
Starting with a square grid filled with numbers, we will get rid of numbers (by blacking them out) so that there is only one of each number in any row or column. The only thing is that we can't black out numbers that are next to each other (vertically or horizontally). Lastly, all numbers left …
Math Monday: Stop or Dare
Using a shuffled deck of cards, players will take turns turning over the top card(s) of the deck. During your turn, you can turn over as many cards as you like until you decide to stop. Once you decided to stop, you add all the numbers on the cards and that's your points (Jacks are …
Math Monday: Battleships
Based on the popular 2-player game Battleship, this logic puzzle has us finding the locations of ships! Battleships come in different sizes (occupying 1 square, 2 squares, etc.). Hints given around the edge of the grid tell us how many squares of a ship(s) are in each column or row. Battleships cannot be next to …