Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #651444 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 40 pages

Customer Reviews

Disappointed reader.
I am a secondary maths teacher, I knew the book was aimed at primary school but I thought it might be something I could use with my S.E.N. classes. From the other reviews about this book I it sounded like a really interesting read and fun. I was really disappointed, I would hardly call the exercises 'riddles'. Basically it's just describing how to group items together to make them easier to count, rather than counting each individual item. But every page is the same, and it gets boring.
The book is nicely presented and colourful, the poems are cute but there are definately no riddles in this book. For very young children only, and I think it would be better used in a one to one situation rather than with a class of children.

Quick Counts Build Confidence and Interest in Arithmetic!
Greg Tang has put together a series of counting riddles which challenge you to find short cuts to a faster answer. Each problem provides the introduction to a new challenge. The riddles are written in verse and encourage you to develop your skills in patern recognition, grouping, and multi-step thinking. The book will be as much fun for parents as for youngsters, and can provide the basis for spotting interesting problems in the world around you. Clever rhymes, hints, and colorful illustrations combine to provide plenty of visual and mental stimulation. The riddles focus on natural objects like animals, insects, plants, and fruit to increase awareness of the patterns occuring around us.

The riddles have fun names (like Fish School, Grapes of Math, Win-Doze, and For the Birds). My favorite riddles were Ant Attack and It's a Jungle Out There.

The left hand page contains a colorful computer illustration provided by Harry Briggs. These are large and appropriately ambiguous to hide the patterns a little. Color and shape are especially used well to complicate the counting problem. On the right hand page is a riddle, containing a clue at the end. "To help you find the right amount/Group by fives before you count" is one such clue. At the back of the book are the solutions to each riddle.

Pattern recognition riddles help you to see squares and rectangles within more complex designs. You are also encouraged to see diamonds as being squares rotated by 45 degrees. Many times a pattern is repeated, and that becomes the basis of multiplication.

Grouping encourages you to add common sums. An example would be "sets of (8 + 3) + (6 + 5) + (4 + 7) = 33." By seeing that you can add to common subnumbers, you quickly find three elevens and then multiply by 3 in your head.

The two-step riddles have you determine what the total universe is (usually by multiplying) and then subtracting the exceptions to get the subset. One example has a building with regular intervals of windows, some lit and some not. How many are lit?

Most people never get to do the fun part of math, which is thinking up new and better ways to do things that build on imagination. By allowing your child to see the potential playfulness of what mathematicians do, this book will help create a better sense of what math is all about and that it can be fun.

After you have had a good time with the book, I suggest that you and your child create new puzzles for each other.

Build new knowledge from repeated patterns, wherever you find them!