Does your family enjoy the fall? It's my favorite season. September is a great month in Illinois, cool enough to open the windows and sometimes even to want a jacket. The farmers are harvesting the corn all around, so we can finally see the horizon again. I love the wide-open sky!

This month's newsletter focuses on next week's annual math holiday: Math Storytelling Day, which was created by Maria Droujkova, coauthor of Moebius Noodles and Avoid Hard Work!

Storytelling with Math

September 25th is Math Storytelling Day. We celebrate by making up and sharing math stories.

Everyone loves a story, so this is a great way to motivate your children to play around with math. What might a math story involve? Patterns, logic, history, puzzles, relationships, fictional characters, … and yes, even numbers.

For inspiration, visit:

• Maria's original Math Storytelling Day post with fun comments
• Resources for celebrating Math Storytelling Day

Get Inspired by These Stories

• Sue VanHattum shares Jolly Josh, by Felicia Jeffley
• Alexander Bogomolny's stories about The Idea of Counting
• Interactive Storybooks at Early Family Math
• Natural Math blog's Math Storytelling Day archive
• And my latest favorite: Maths Sheep Play Sheep by David Butler

Storytelling Activities with Kids

Over the years, my own children and my Math Club kids have enjoyed a wide variety of mathematical stories. We may even have done some of them on Storytelling Day, though I wasn’t keeping track.

For instance, once upon a time we:

• Played a story-telling game
• Imagined the secret life of numbers
• Participated in the story problem challenge
• Read a wide variety of living math books
• Created a fictional math adventure saga
• Wrote about a math lesson that turned into an experiment
• And shared the story of solving a tough math problem

One year, I even celebrated Math Storytelling Day at the hospital.

What Math Stories Will You Tell?

Have you and your children created any mathematical stories of your own? I’d love to hear them! You can always hit "Reply" on any Playful Math newsletter to send me a message. Or share your story online and send me the link.

Behind the Scenes: A Writer's Life

For those of you who love math games, I've started work on Volume 2 of the Tabletop Math Games Collection. Hoping to get it done, except for last-minute formatting, in time for a Kickstarter next January.

(There are still have a few of Volume 1 leftover from this year's campaign. Hit "Reply" to email me if you want to buy a copy.)

I recently launched a Patreon subscription for anyone who wants to get exclusive early-access content while supporting my work. If you're interested, you can read more about that on my blog.

And I spent a lot of time last week fixing old blog posts with broken links. This writing life is a lot more down-in-the-boring-details than what novels led me to believe.

Until next month, have fun telling math stories with your kids!

—Denise

P.S.: Did you know that storytelling actually helps children understand math and master problem-solving? Check out this free 14-page sample of my Word Problems from Literature book, which includes three ready-to-use student pages with instructions, answers, and space for kids to create their own stories.

Header and footer image from the activity guide Geometric Coloring 5: Advanced Tessellations. Learn how your children can create their own unique math art patterns. Practical geometry, and plenty of fun!