Hands-on teaching methods proven to work!

So fun, they won’t even know they’re learning mathematics! Here is a collection of creative, hands-on mathematics activities designed to engage your after-school students in standards-based mathematics learning while also meeting your needs as a youth-group leader. You'll easily have them playing, thinking, building, and experimenting with mathematics and how it works. You will find advice on how to use each activity as well as simple, straightforward explanations of the mathematics involved. Additional information provides historical background and science connections to give you the option of extending the activities.

Published by Key Curriculum Press, the leading publisher of innovative mathematics materials for middle school and high school students, The Math Explorer was developed by the folks at Exploratorium— San Francisco’s acclaimed hands-on museum of science, art, and human perception. The activities in this book apply the hands-on teaching methods that work so well in science to teaching and learning about mathematics. Carefully tested with groups of young people, this collection of games, puzzles, experiments, and projects provides appealing opportunities for practicing a variety of mathematics skills—from problem solving and graphing to fractions and ratios—and you can do all of them on a shoestring budget!

The Math Explorer contains 24 playful activities—tested and proven successful—just like those found at the Exploratorium. At the heart of each activity is a mathematical skill or process. Students learn by experimenting—by asking questions and finding their own answers.

The kit contains all the supplies needed to do all the activities. Many of these tools and materials can be reused as the activities are repeated.