Creative Play: Math & Logic

As Numb3rs illustrates, if you want to understand the world...study math and logic (and art and literature and geography and history and physics). The internet has made math more accessible and a lot more fun. In some ways, math is the puzzle field and provides an infinite variety of activities and challenges. We have provided some links to some of the more interesting math sites we have found online. Not surprising, there is a tremendous amount of overlap with the section on Science.

We went looking for the coolest math sites we could find. As with the other creative play subjects, if you know a site we should include, email us and we'll add it to the collection

General Math Sites

Cool Math for Kids The site self-identifies as an "amusement park of math, games, and more," and it does a pretty good job of living up to the description. Even for kids and adults who may have an aversion towards math (we are prime examples), there The site not only includes some pretty lesson materials, it also includes some excellent puzzles and logic games.

Cyberchase. Public Broadcasting (PBS). We are PBS fans anyway, but PBS does more than just television shows. They produce some great sites for kids, For those of you unfamiliar with Cyberchase, it is a mathematics-based show (and website) for kids from 8 to 12, including eight seasons of full episodes. Their project pages and puzzles include all sorts of materials you can download, print, and use, including a great recipe for ice cream (measurement is math). This is also a terrific site for working with kids who are "math adverse."

Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles. Okay, we admit it. We are puzzle and game enthusiasts and this site has a terrific collection of games and puzzles covering most of the major areas of math. Most of the materials are probably better suited to kids beyond the age of 13, but you may be able to modify some of them for kids who are slightly younger.

Math Cats. Our cats are not quite up to the task, even with this cools site, but if they were equal to the challenge, we would start them here. Math Cats is a good site for introducing math to kids and making math accessible even to kids who may have trouble with math in school. We are personally fond of the math art pages.

Math Hunt. Brought to you from the folks from Scholastic (the same company that published Harry Potter). Math hunt doesn't limit itself to math only, it also includes social studies and science into some very cool internet-based scavenger hunts. The hunts are based on math problems and are a terrific way to spend a rainy afternoon. For example, their math hunt for ancient civilizations involves solving ancient mathematic riddles, learning about thermal tube worms (which until I tried one of the scavanger hunts, I had no idea existed) and exploring Rome, Greece, and Egypt (along with a whole bunch of other sites). This site is incredibly cool.