Yes, Dad has a Blendtec Total Blender. No, he hasn’t tried blending dictionaries, math texts or any other book for that matter. But, there’s no doubt that it would. And if you were so inclined, it would most certainly produce a set of word problem worksheets complete with answer keys almost exactly like you can find right here.

If you don’t believe me, just ask Tom. You should see what this thing will do to golf balls. Or your iPhone. Please keep your hands, feet, children and any other valuables away from the fast moving parts.

Link: New Word Problem Worksheets

[UPDATE: More worksheets have been added at the link above that include problems with unused facts. These additional worksheets require students to filter out irrelevant information.]

It’s officially two weeks until Election Day, and we’re already gearing up here for an evening of popcorn in front of the TV. With Dad not being a big sports fan, election night is something like the Super Bowl around here, and this is the first election where the kids realize there’s something like “teams” we root for throughout the night.

That said, if we learned anything in the last two elections, it’s that score keeping is hard. Seriously, if football had scoring rules like the Electoral College I think we’d be looking at a lot more hockey fans out there. Let’s take a closer look!

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In the stunningly wretched way that only a red-streaked quiz pinned to a note from your child’s teacher saying, “Can you go over this with your daughter?” can point out, it occurred to me that subtraction can be sub-categorized into more than just borrowing and non-borrowing problems. In fact, that whole scenario where borrowing from zero digits in the minuend, or borrowing across a zero, is down-right problematic. Witness the erasure strewn red nightmare that is tonight’s homework hour.

To better categorize this, I added some new worksheets that introduce borrowing without needing to borrow across zeros. This should provide a gentle introduction to borrowing without introducing the extra mechanics necessary to borrow across multiple place values. Also, I created a set of worksheets that focus especially on borrowing across zero that were designed to drive a nail through tonight’s trouble spot.

Keep your fingers crossed for this next unit test for me.

New worksheets at the links below…

Subtraction with Borrowing Without Crossing Zeros

Subtraction Focusing on Borrowing Across Zeros

This site’s focus is obviously math worksheets, but that doesn’t mean a few extra goodies can’t work their way into the mix. Another fun family past time here is spelling test practice. This year, on Wednesday evening we also write out and turn in sentences using each of the week’s spelling words. Between all this spelling entertainment and the cursive handwriting practice, we’re using up a lot of lined handwriting paper.

I had previously created a master in Quark that I have been copying repeatedly, but lately the need for slightly smaller rules came up. In the interest of sharing, I went ahead and created a whole new set of resource pages for the site that include different rules and layouts for various activities. And just in time for this week’s spelling word sentences tonight… My daughter will be thrilled when she gets home!

Along the way, this created the infrastructure necessary to produce similar resource pages for printable graph paper in both plain and engineering layouts. The sets are in both metric and standard sizes, but because of variations in printers there’s a slight amount of drift so please regard the dimensions as approximate.

Links to the new pages are below…

Printable Graph Paper

Printable Ruled Handwriting Paper

A Hundred Billion Pennies Saved, is $1 Billion Earned...

Big numbers starting with seven are in the news this week, and it’s worth a Math Riff to try to get a handle on just how much tax payer contribution our elected leaders are asking us to sign up for. It’s those billion dollar figures again that boggle the mind. Did you know a billion dollars worth of pennies weighs 312,000 tons, and would make a cube 126 feet on a side? Or that there are over 2 billion pennies in circulation today?

The $7 billion dollar amount is the current revenue short fall in California. Governor Schwarzenegger is getting ready to hit up Uncle Sam to cover the gap until the credit markets loosen up and the state can go back to conventional lending sources to cover its cash needs. That should get California through this fiscal year, but what the state will do next time around is anybody’s guess… Unless the California tax payers can find two million pounds of pennies in between their couch cushions or car seats, there could be an even bigger crunch come next year.

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