What Are Math Snacks?

Have you every had a math snack?  No it isn't food.  Math snacks is a site that is filled with all sorts of learning games.  These learning games are designed to focus on specific skills.  Technically, math snacks are educational animations, games, and interactive tools that help students.

Math snacks is designed for students in grades 4 to 8 but could be used for older students who need a bit more reinforcement. The page called teaching with provides information on how to use these snacks as part of regular instruction.  

There is a short video show how to use the snack, and provides a bunch of resources to help use it.  There is a teacher guide, a learners guide, answer key, common core standards it meets, the ability to download it, and a transcript.  Not all activities have the full list of resources but most have at least a teachers guide so the teacher has help.

Each snack lists the name, whether its an animation, game, or interactive tools, along with the title. I checked out Curse reverse. This is an animation focused on helping middle schoolers learn to build algebraic expressions.  It can be done in either English or Spanish.  The game it took me to, was well done as far as artwork went, it uses the up, down, left, or right arrows to move the person through the maze.  I got stuck shortly into it because I couldn't quite figure out how to get the person over something but I need a bit more time to figure it out.

I took time to look at the teachers guide for Curse Reverse which listed everything you should do before teaching this snack. It even includes discussion questions the teacher asks students after letting them play for 10 minutes.  There is also a section designed to support the students in doing the activity and finally, if you need to enrich this activity, there is a section for that.  It is a very complete guide and has everything you need to do a good job teaching this.

Math Snacks was developed by people at New Mexico State University so it has been created by several educators.  They even took time to do some research on how well it works, and a list of publications associated with the snacks.

This is something my middle school students could use and enjoy.  I hope to include a few of these activities for my 6 to 8th graders because I think they might enjoy them.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Enjoy your day.