This is Not a Math Book

After 3+ years of writing newsletters, sometimes I find myself at a loss.

I pace around my house, complaining out loud about how I can't possibly find any more cool math stuff, I've written about everything already, time to pack it in and start my Philadelphia 76ers fanblog.

And then I pass my bookshelf, where I see a book I've had for a half-decade and somehow managed not to write about yet.

How does this happen??

Anyway, I am extremely excited to share with you one of my longstanding favorite resources, both as a teacher and as a parent of a very artistic daughter.

It's called This is Not a Math Book.

How to Play

This is Not a Math Book is, well, a book written by Anna Weltman. There are certainly games inside this book, and puzzles, but I'd primarily categorize it as an art book.

Anna has done a wonderful job of finding artistic ideas that are beautiful and mathematically meaningful at the same time. 

There are explorations of all your favorites: Sierpinski Triangle, curve stitching, tessellations, and the four color theorem.

But there are also new ideas that I had never before encountered! One of my favorites is titled Loop-de-Loops (detailed instructions here). You make a three-digit sequence, like 2-1-4 for example. Then you start anywhere on a sheet of graph paper and draw up 2 units, then 1 unit right, 4 units down, 2 units left, and so on. The trick is, you always turn 90 degrees clockwise before making your next line segment. Eventually, the pattern spirals back on itself. 

Questions to Ask

When you sit down with your kid to do some art, I'd treat this book like a recipe book. You don't start on page 1 and make every dish. Instead, you flip through until you find something that looks tasty.

Similarly, I guarantee that your child will resonate with one of the pages in this book. That's where you should start. Try out the suggested art piece, and then ask the most important question of the book: "What else can we do with this idea?"

Take the Loop-de-Loops for example. What if we made the numbers bigger? What if we did a four-digit sequence, or a five-digit sequence? Do all these loop back, or is there a way to make them go off in some direction forever?

I have some intuition as to the answers to these questions, but I'll admit that I don't know. But if I sat down with my kids to explore, you'd be sure that I'd be exploring every variation I could think of. 

That's how I'd approach this book. Find an interesting topic, and explore it until you can't think of anything else cool to do. Then try another one. That way, the book will remain a rich source of inspiration for years to come.

And if you get tired of the book, you can always buy its sequel...

Click here to buy This is Not a Math Book (affiliate link)