Our little M5 is buzzing with numbers at the moment (actually, it’s been a very long moment lasting a few weeks now). Whenever we see numbers – on car number plates, on letter boxes, on packaging, on book pages, on clocks, or road signs…..everywhere….he’s reading them out and/or asking questions about them.
Yesterday he wanted to know if you could do one more number past infinity. And was that even bigger than “a hundred thousands”?, said with great emphasis, because that is a very big number, you know. 

So he’s inspired me to pull together some of the resources I have been accumulating about mathematics. An article would have been really good, but it’s just going to be a list of links that I have found to be helpful.

There’s a fantastic living mathematics website, with al sorts of articles and ideas and book lists and more than I could ever think of, much of which has a strong literature base and even ATJEd gets a mention.

Then there’s a big list of books taken from a Charlotte Mason-ish perspective, (ie inspirational books, which could be classified as *living* books).

There’s another shorter list, also with a CM flavour, and understandably, quite a few double-ups with the previous list.

Another little list I have found interesting in its own right is a list of mathematicians.

And just in case anyone is interested, here’s a long-winded account of a decade of maths in our family, and a little *time* story.

To update: Our eldest two (currently aged 13 and so-close-to-12-you-can-barely-call-him-11-any-more) have just spent a year with their first textbook. I have not had to tell them to “do maths”…….self-motivation is evident. In fact, I got a surprise last week when I saw just how far through the book they are. When they are done with the current book, we will have a nosey through the books we have on our bookshelf to see what they would like to move on to next. In the maths department we have: 

• an old musty 50c copy of “The How and Why Wonder Book of Mathematics by Esther and Harold Highland….ancient, but fascinating…..and do the principles change?
• Challenge Math by Edward Zaccaro
• Mathematics A Human Endeavour by Harold Jacobs (which they have already begun)
• The Amazing Mathematical Amusement Arcade by Brian Bolt (the title of which annoys me, but the book is a lot of fun!)
• Math Olympiad Contest Problems by Dr. George Lenchner
• The 10 Things All Future Mathematicians and Scientists Must Know (But Are Rarely Taught) also by Edward Zaccaro
• All The Math You’ll Ever Need by Steve Slavin

If they want to “teach” their younger siblings, they might pick up Family Math and do a little activity from that with them.

And in addition to those books, they now have this post to take a squizz at if they would like!