Yelling at Maths Games and Other Stories of Our Week

I didn’t make a Thursday video this week. I wonder if you noticed. I meant to. I even had a ‘great’ video idea. I’d planned to interview Andy, my school teacher husband. A school teacher with unschooling children? That might have generated some good conversation. But I never actually got around to doing the interview. Andy and I got side-tracked with other things.

One thing in particular took up lots of hours this week. We’ve been formatting my children’s novel, The Angels of Abbey Creek, ready for publishing. We? That’s not quite right. I didn’t format a single word. Andy and my older girls did all the hard work. I just observed.

Have you ever self-published a novel? It’s a bigger task than I imagined. On the publishing website it says…

6 Easy Steps to Publishing a Book
Step 1: Write, edit and format your book.

That made us laugh. Whoever wrote this first ‘easy’ step has never written, edited and formatted a book.

Imogen and Charlotte now know how to self-publish a novel. They’ll be able to use their new skills when they want to publish one of their own books. Perhaps this month’s Camp NaNoWriMo novels will eventually be edited into something worth sharing. Yes, the girls are busy writing. It’s week 2 of Camp NaNoWriMo, and word counts are
rising. Did you know there’s a lot of real life maths involved in NaNoWriMo?

“How many words did you write today?”

“4 456. That makes 27 689 words all together. That means Ineed to write 22 311 more words to get to 50 000. How many days left in the month? Hang on a minute, and I’ll work out what my average word count needs to be if I’m
going to hit 50 000 by the last day of July…but what if I decide to write more than 50 000… or what if I want to finish early?”

(btw, I didn’t check my maths so there could be some mistakes in the last paragraph!)

Oh yes, numbers, as well as words, are swirling around inside everyone’s heads… even Gemma-Rose’s. She’s been doing lots of maths without even realising it.

Talking of maths, yesterday I browsed the Internet for some fresh strewing resource ideas and I ended up on a website packed with maths games. Now I’m rather suspicious of online maths games. Are they just dressed up drill? The best way to find out is by playing them. So I decided to do just that. It didn’t take long before I became very frustrated: “Where are the instructions? I can’t work out how to play.”

Gemma-Rose heard me complaining. She plonked herself down on the sofa beside me and said, “Let me help you, Mum.”

I-hate-maths-Gemma-Rose, was willing to help me with a maths game? Well, we ended up spending a rather enjoyable hour yelling at the games together. Did we learn any maths? I don’t know, but we had fun as we tried to work out what we were supposed to do. I guess we did a lot of problem solving if nothing else.

Another game I found is called Wuzzit Trouble. It’s a free app available for both iPad and Android tablets. I was rather intrigued after reading this recommendation:

“Wuzzit Trouble is a true game, not a rote practice
application or the so-called chocolate-covered broccoli that places a veneer of
gamification over traditional drill. The game is not a reward for correctly
answering math problems, the game is it’s own reward and math skills are a mere
side effect of play … ” – Marie Bjerede

Chocolate covered broccoli? Oh yes! That’s a wonderful description of most maths games. (Though I have nothing against broccoli. I rather like it.)

“Hey Gemma-Rose, would you like to play a game with me. I found a new app.”

“Is it a maths app?”

Ignoring her question, I said, “I wonder how we play…”

“Let me see. I’ll work it out.”

Soon we were rotating gears and freeing Wuzzits We did quite a lot of maths as we were spinning those gears. The game was more like a puzzle than an exercise. My brain had a bit of a workout. Is Wuzzit Trouble worth playing? It’s probably worth taking a look. And if you don’t like it (or your children don’t like it), it won’t matter because it’s free.

I’m sorry there was no video for you to look at this week. Maybe that’s a relief. It must be hard to find enough time to watch all my videos.

And looking at the time, I can see it’s time to finish this post. I am due up at the hairdressers in a few minutes. Maybe you’ll see my newly trimmed fringe in next week’s video, if I find time to make it.

So that was my week. How was yours?

Did you discover anything interesting? Learn anything new? Go anywhere exciting? I’d love to hear from you!