[This is a back-issue of this website’s newsletter]
If you’re interested in the techy side of things, the Math Architect Game is the first fully javascript game on Dr Mike’s Math Games for Kids. This means it should work in any modern browser, with no special plugins. It’s played fully online.
In the game, you take the role of an apartment designer. Your boss gets you to work on a series of projects, for each project, you need to design the floor plan for an apartment. Each time, the size of the apartment is different.
The trick is, you can only use square rooms.
After each project, your boss might give you a bonus. The total money you earn is your score in the game. Your bonus will be bigger if you use fewer rooms. There is also a high scores table for the game – but if a player doesn’t want their name recorded, they can just leave their name blank as they play.
If you’re interested in the math side of things, math architect is getting kids to write numbers as sums of squares. Only a few numbers are square numbers, some numbers can be written as a sum of two squares (think of Pythagoras’ theorem). Mathematicians who study numbers have shown that most numbers can be written as a sum of three squares, and all numbers can be written as a sum of four squares. So, the most rooms any apartment in Math Architect actually needs is four.
Even without knowing all this, the game will give kids fun practice with square numbers, and addition and subtraction of numbers up to 999.
On another note, February 14 is approaching. Therefore, this might be a good time to remind you of the Love Heart Math Puzzle, uploaded to the site about a year ago.
Have fun!