Math Wizardry for Kids

Re-styled and featuring new, fun-to-do projects and color illustrations, this brand-new edition of Barron's Math Wizardry for Kids demonstrates to young readers that numbers are fascinating to ponder, fun to calculate, and an important key to scientific understanding. Kids explore intriguing concepts, such as Fibonacci numbers, which dramatically express symmetries in the shapes and number patterns that we regularly encounter in plant life and other aspects of nature. Among the recommended activities for young readers that are presented new in this edition are experiments with time—

• Methods for measuring the Earth's rotation
• Directions for making a sun dial to measure daylight hours
• Suggestions for experimenting with a time-telling pendulum

Additional fun projects include constructing ciphers and cracking codes, managing money, devising a stock market game, thinking like a computer, and many others. The authors' suggested tools for becoming a math wizard are simple and easily available. They include plenty of paper (including graph and construction paper), pencils, a ruler, a drawing compass, a directional compass, a protractor, a triangle, a simple calculator, a notebook for recording observations, and miscellaneous art supplies. Add them together with this fascinating book and the result equals hours of fun. Color illustrations throughout.

Children's Literature

Packed with fun approaches to experiments and outlined with full kid-friendly directions, these hands-on activities encourage kids to take on the role of math wizard and arrive at their own scientific conclusions. This spiral-bound resource demonstrates to young readers that numbers are fun, fascinating, and all around them. Kids will understand that math is an important key to scientific understanding. Readers will explore such concepts as nature's shapes, measuring the Earth's rotation, and Fibonacci numbers. Additional fun projects include constructing ciphers, cracking codes, figuring basketball statistics, making a sundial to measure daylight hours, thinking like a computer, and much more. Suggested tools for becoming a math wizard are simple and readily available. Sections are presented for parents and teachers to help children experience the math all around them. This is a tool to be used by children independently, within the context of learning in the classroom, or in the home. Filled with color illustrations throughout, this fascinating book provides hours of fun and learning. Reviewer: Laura Backman

Margaret Kenda is a writer specializing in creative, hands-on projects for children. Her books' subjects include science, math, geography, inventions, language, and cooking. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and holds a doctorate from the University of Iowa. She lives in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

Phyllis S. Williams is the original co-author of Barron's Wizardry for Kids series of books. A graduate of Bates College and the University of Maine, she is a retired nurse and counselor. She lives in Bangor, Maine.