Overview
Don't Just Learn Geometry...Master It!
Brimming with fun and educational games and activities, the Magical Math series provides everything you need to know to become a master of mathematics! In each of these books, Lynette Long uses her unique style to help you truly understand mathematical concepts as you use common objects such as playing cards, dice, coins, and every mathematician's basic tools: paper and pencil.
Inside Groovy Geometry, you'll find all the geometry basics, plus information on how to figure out the height of any object from its shadow, find distances "as the crow flies," estimate the area of any space, and much more. While you play the Name Game and Rectangle Race, you'll learn how to draw, measure, and identify different kinds of angles, triangles, and quadrilaterals. And with fun activities like Bull's Eye and Pizza Party, you'll practice plotting coordinate points on a graph and measuring the area and diameter of a circle. Most important, you'll have a great time doing it!
So why wait? Jump right in and find out how easy it is to become a mathematics master!
Synopsis
Don’t Just Learn Geometry...Master It!
Brimming with fun and educational games and activities, the Magical Math series provides everything you need to know to become a master of mathematics! In each of these books, Lynette Long uses her unique style to help you truly understand mathematical concepts as you use common objects such as playing cards, dice, coins, and every mathematician’s basic tools: paper and pencil.
Inside Groovy Geometry, you’ll find all the geometry basics, plus information on how to figure out the height of any object from its shadow, find distances "as the crow flies," estimate the area of any space, and much more. While you play the Name Game and Rectangle Race, you’ll learn how to draw, measure, and identify different kinds of angles, triangles, and quadrilaterals. And with fun activities like Bull’s Eye and Pizza Party, you’ll practice plotting coordinate points on a graph and measuring the area and diameter of a circle. Most important, you’ll have a great time doing it!
So why wait? Jump right in and find out how easy it is to become a mathematics master!
Michael Chabin - Children's Literature
Many books promise to 'make math easy.' That is fraud. Math cannot be made easy. Neither can anything worth doing be made easy, from drawing to understanding the flow of history to playing the cello. Nor can a book make math fun. It has always been fun. Books can make it more accessible. Books can explore the kinds of math children rarely see. Books can even offer new and interesting ways at looking at the math with which children are already familiar. Unfortunately, they rarely do any of those things. Most children's math books from the texts they use in school to "enrichment" books like this one make math seem an artificial exercise with neither beauty nor relevance. That is a shame. In fairness, this book does contain many nice, if not entirely original, activities. Teachers might use it as a source for geometry problems. But, it is far from ideal for children. Consider the first words in the book: "Geometry is the study of points, lines, angles, and shapes, and their relationships and properties." Is that sentence intended to capture a child's attention? Is that the carefully crafted first sentence of a book no child can put down? Is it really intended to compete with Harry Potter? Obviously not. It isn't even very accurate (geometry would be better defined as "the study of space and its properties.") The irritating illustrations don't help. Neither does the cheap typesetting and printing, albeit on acid-free paper. In short, this book seems to have been produced with the idea that it will be required reading and, like any textbook, it does not have to be beautiful, or engaging, or interesting. For an idea of what children's math books can be, take a look at the magnificent The ManWho Counted, Malba Tahan's brilliant book on problem solving, or anything at all by Mitsumasa Anno. For a tutorial, Algebra Unplugged by Amdahl and Loats is not a bad example. For enrichment try Innumeracy or A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, by Paulos (written for adults but perfectly accessible for a middle schooler). 2003, John Wiley and Sons,