Ed Emberley!!

Math and art oh boy!! Two of the books that were shared at the recent math conference I attended were Picture Pie 1 and Picture Pie 2 by Ed Emberley. OMG. What great ideas for teaching geometry, parts of a whole, spatial sense and so much more! Not to mention excellent fine motor skill practice with all of the tracing and cutting involved!! He shows you how to divide shapes into fractional pieces to create animals, designs, flowers, clowns and SO MUCH more!!

 Some cute creations from the conference. Us adults had so much fun-haha!

The activities in these books sort of remind me of TLC Art projects except now I am looking at them through a math lens. Isn’t it funny how lessons/activities change based off how you are looking at and thinking about them?!

I plan to use these books next year to teach shapes, fractions (fold the circle in half once and what do you have? ½ …fold that in half again and what do you have? ¼) The creativity and brilliant visuals of these activities are sure to get my students excited about math!! Look at this and this and this!! Again, you can find these activities and many more over at Ed Emberley's website. Click on activities and have a look around!! 

How do you get your students excited about math while teaching these hard to understand, yet oh so important concepts?! I'd love to hear!