Thanks to Aidan and 7D for sharing this funny mathematics from Abbot and Costello

Check out "Who's on First?", also by them. It's one of my favourites.

So You Want to Code? Cool!

When we looked at binary numbers and compared them to our lovely Base 10 Decimal number system some of you mentioned that you were interested in learning to code.

You don't have to wait to be shown or taught, you can access so many wonderful learning tools on the internet.

Amazing people have produced The Hour of Code, where you can start coding in just one hour.

They have many different types of code to learn so it doesn't have to end after one hour.

Why learn to code? It's everywhere



Where to begin:

Try these one hour sessions from the Hour of Code
Make your own Flappy Bird game
Figure out a few mazes with Bill Gates
Create beautiful spirals and designs
Star Wars fun - this one is new, I haven't tried it yet. Exciting!

Maths and you guessed it... Christmas

Here is a gift for you from Mathsland - a game. It's the latest thing and Jo Boaler of Stanford likes it so much she is now on the team..

Download Mathbreakers and puzzle it out. It looks like Mathbreakers will just keep growing too.

And this ancient game - I haven't beaten the computer yet. Can you? Cool Math - Mancala

For the next game you will need a 10 by 10 grid - this is called How Close to 100? To make it more challenging try How Close to 1 and use decimals. This is from Jo Boaler.

You will need

• two players

• two dice

• recording sheet

This game is played in partners. Two children share a blank 100 grid. The first partner rolls two number dice.

The numbers that come up are the numbers the child uses to make an array on the 100 grid. They can put the array anywhere on the grid, but the goal is to fill up the grid to get it as full as possible. After the player draws the array on the grid, she writes in the number sentence that describes the grid. The second player then rolls the dice, draws the number grid and records their number sentence. The game ends when both players have rolled the dice and cannot put any more arrays on the grid. How close to 100 can you get?

Variation Each child can have their own number grid. Play moves forward to see who can get closest to 100. 

The Beauty Of Mathematics - A Video