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.

Have your kids ever tried to "play" a book the way that they play a game?

My son has this little game with an alphabet book where he will deliberately tell me the wrong letter to make a funny word. So on the "H is for Horse" page, I ask him which letter he sees, and he'll respond "Z," which forces me to say "Z is for Zorse," at which point he falls out of the bed laughing every. Single. Time.

On other nights, my two older kids work together to recite the entirety of The Book with No Pictures by heart. Which is tough to do when you're too young to read and the book, as it advertises, has no pictures! (By the way, this book was written by Ryan from The Office, and it is hilarious. Check it out.)

And of course I've shared in the past about how my kids turned How Many?, the greatest math book of all time, into a guessing game.

These little games make bedtime into a special part of the day for me. I can get as worn down as any parent, repeating the same book word-for-word over and over. But when my kids find a little game in the middle of a book, they bring a spark of novelty that livens up the whole room.

So I'd love to share the most playable book I've ever read: Press Here.

It's no secret that I love the work of Christopher Danielson. His website, Talking Math With Your Kids, was the inspiration for this newsletter, and I've already shared one of his books, Which One Doesn't Belong?, in a previous edition.

Christopher is out with a new book, How Many?, that I honestly believe should be in any child's book collection. If you invite my kid to your kid's birthday party, you already know what present they're getting.

I love games. I mean, I started a weekly newsletter just so I had a place where I could talk about games with someone other than my poor wife.

But even I can't pull together the energy every day to get down a board game, dump out all the pieces, and play with my kids. Some days, I just don't have it in me.

I still want my kids to have some sort of mathematical experience each day, though. Usually, I find a way to ask a couple of math questions during dinner or bath time.

But what about parents who are a little math-phobic, or just unsure of what questions to ask? For those parents, I have a great recommendation: Bedtime Math.

This week's "game" is actually a book by one of my favorite authors and math thinkers, Christopher Danielson. Christopher is the creator of the Talking Math with Your Kids website, where he has collected all sorts of great resources and conversation prompts for you and your kids. Many of my ideas about mathematical talk come from Christopher, so if you like what you read here, be sure to check out his site.

Not only that, Christopher has a side business making beautiful mathematical toys for kids. I own a copy of just about every set of blocks that he has made, and I can't recommend them highly enough. On to the book!