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Puzzles and visual thinking games for math education

cover image of me doing mobius strips with kids

Math Monday

Live in Zoom, Mondays 2pm PDT

Keep your math brain humming year with a free half hour of math games every Monday, live in Zoom. Perfect for kids ages 8-14. 

What reads the same right side up and upside down?

Ambigrams are words written that read in more than one way. Ambigrams are a great way to introduce kids to symmetry and problem solving, and bring artistic creativity into math learning.

Watch the video above to learn about the different types of ambigrams, and learn to create your own ambigrams.

Click below to get Ambigram activities you can print and  use in your home or classroom.

Slide showHandout (symmetry puzzles)Thinking Upside down activity book

Puzzles and visual thinking games for math education

In Memoriam John Conway

John Conway, one of the greatest contemporary mathematicians, and certainly the most entertaining, recently passed away. Wherever John was it was a mathematical party, and you were invited.

As my tribute to John, I have spelled his name in his Game of Life (not to be confused with the Hasbro board game), a remarkably deep “cellular automaton”. In this design, each letter is a pattern that repeats after some number of moves, that number here being 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 14. To learn more about Life, see this Numberphile interview, read Siobhan Robert’s biography Genius at Play, or watch his friends remember him

Slide Shows

To create exciting math lessons that kids love to do, learn how game designers make their games so engaging.
Follow your mathematical curiosity, and you may soon find yourself in uncharted mathematical territory. That’s a good thing.

Talks

The Art of Puzzle Design (TED talk). A tour of my puzzles and the ideas that inspired them.
Symmetry, Art and Illusion (Museum of Mathematics). How the same patterns of symmetry appear in art, math, music and animation.

Articles

Ambigrams