Pinocchio’s Playmates (pattern puzzle)

Pinocchio’s Playmates (pattern puzzle)

The Adventures of Pinocchio were written by Carlo Collodi in 1883. This puzzle was inspired by imagining Pinocchio’s classroom – full of little people who always lied or always told the truth. In one of his classroom the truth teller students and liar...
Tree Kangaroo Hopscotch (skip counting)

Tree Kangaroo Hopscotch (skip counting)

I did not even know of Tree Kangaroos – less so their secret ritual of arboreal hopscotch 😉 “Mammals of Australia”, Vol. II Plate 50 by John Gould (1804-1881)  When kangaroos skip count up a branch the numbers increase. Let one of them start on the...
Siteswap (juggling number patterns)

Siteswap (juggling number patterns)

This three-ball juggling is common, but Juggling can use a lot of complex patterns. How should we organize these patterns so we could talk about them? It was not until the 1980s that mathematicians and jugglers started to solve this problem. The result was SITESWAP....
ConHex (strategy game)

ConHex (strategy game)

ConHex (Michail Antonow, 2002) ConHex is a pencil and paper game curricular for students learning about perimeter, but the most important reason to play any game like this is to get students thinking rigorously as they try to beat one another. As with most connection...
Finding a Tough Mountain (ordering numbers)

Finding a Tough Mountain (ordering numbers)

Finding a Tough Mountain (Erdős–Szekeres, 1935) Get your students to organize numbers so that no four are ascending or descending. This can be done with movable numbers or by getting the students to write in their notebooks (no erasers permitted ;-)) Here is a pdf of...