This is a fun site that combines math and math trivia questions with cute photos of cats! Navigation is super simple. Just click any one of the pictures to explore. The sections are: Math Cats Explore, Math Cats Love MicroWorlds, Math Crafts, Math Cats’ Art Gallery, Math Cats’ Attic, Math Cats’ Love Mail and my favorite, Math Cats’ Photo of the Week.
Math Cats Explore – This is the place to really get the lead out and explore. You will find tons of math related problems, trivia and other activities here. For example, the ancient Egyptian Math Cats Fractions, where you can learn all about fractions with Math Cats. You’ll also find links to story problems, games and fun applications. For instance, the “Exactly How Old Are You”? application. This one breaks down exactly how old you are from the information you put in. It even tells you when your next birthday celebration is! My favorite here was the New Math Loving Animals in the News section. You can learn all about the beavers who built a dam out of money there!
Math Cats Love MicroWorlds – For this section, you need to download the MicroWorlds Player, but trust me, it’s well worth it and it’s free. (There are instructions at the top of the page on the yellow band of color on how to do so and where you can get it). This section is full of interactive applications that will help you learn and make math fun!
Math Crafts – Here you will find a bunch of craft projects that are math related, but fun for your kids to make. This is a great way to start teaching geometry to little kids, because it makes it fun.
Math Cats’ Art Gallery – Here you can find artwork that was designed for a logo challenge. You can also find some fun drawings made by children that were sent into the site. A fun, frisky section.
Math Cats’ Attic – This is an archive of past questions and answers from the magic chalkboard. What’s the magic chalkboard? Well, you are right to ask. You may have noticed the black boxes of scrambled text all over the site. Well, if you mouse over them, they reveal not only the correct answer to the question, but usually the method to get there.
Math Cats’ Love Mail – Here you can send in feedback and read the feedback that others have left on the site before you. The site author even posts as to why there are more open ended math explorations than games, which I thought rocked. See, once you got the right answer in a game, you could just memorize it, but that doesn’t encourage you to think! Makes sense to me!
Math Cats’ Photo of the Week – I love this section! You’ll find the link to get here by looking just under the yellow bar before you get to the mouse hole shaped pictures of the other sections. Here you get great cat facts mixed with trivia and math questions. You can even check out the past photos of the week!
This is a great site to use to help get kids interested in math. Go ahead and make it fun at the same time!
http://www.mathcats.com/contents.html
~ Amanda