Book Review

Family Math is what it claims, a guide for parents and children to work together not on passive tasks of rote learning but in active game play, solving problems, experimenting and even discovering. The tools are many but familiar: cups and playing cards and beans, paper and pencil and scissors, for some a watch and a $5 calculator. What to do is neatly shown in the 100 or more activities that are laid out in this cheerfully illustrated, informal book.…Matter is here for children from five to 18, perhaps most of it for the middle-school student, the one who has lots of know-how already and yet still a long way to go. …High aims include the growth of confidence no less than of skill and a glimpse at how careers open in this world with math. Making almost anything economically and well, packing, shipping, selling and buying--all are matters of count, measurement, logical thought, strategy, estimation, spatial form, probability or at least plain head-and-calculator arithmetic. All of these are here unwrapped in the pleasing fragrance of serious fun...This is a curriculum for informal math education, so badly needed…

~ Philip and Phylis Morrison, Scientific American excerpt

I would use this book if I still had children at home. It has a whole range of activities from simple to complex.

~ Lee Grozdins, Ph.D., Physicist, Professor Emeritus, MIT

This book is designed for adults to use with children and is not really a children’s book. Family Math is great book for teaching math to all members of a family, to supplement lessons learned in school or for homeschooling. The authors provide appealing games and activities that make math fun and help children really learn and understand the material.

~ Linda Oliver, Reference Librarian, Curtis Memorial Library