The Prime Radicals
A live-action math education television series on TVOKids, developed by Lynda Colgan, Director of the Community Outreach Centre, in collaboration with Executive Producer Hoda Elatawi, General Assembly Production Centre (Ottawa), the shows make numbers cool for kids with scenarios showing how math is used for everything from clubhouse renovations to cooking.

Homework Help

Mathemagic 

A book written by Lynda Colgan, Director of the Community Outreach Centre, which makes math becomes magic for kids. The book includes ten different categories of math tricks, which are explained using colourful illustrations, step-by-step instructions and explanations of how and why these number tricks work.  Mathemagic was selected by the American-based Junior Library Guild as one of the “best of the best” publications for 2011 and has been nominated by the Ontario Library Association for its Forest of Reading® Program 2012 Silver Birch Award for Children's Non-Fiction.  

Making Math Magic at Home!

Making Math Magic at Home is a 124-page resource book that is filled with tips, tools, activities and games to make learning math a part of everyday life. Included in the book are instruction pages that teach how to make origami creations, do magic tricks with math, create coded pictures and message, learn math from the calendar and measure your body using the rule of thumb. There are games, puzzles and math-focused craft activities that are purposeful and fun to engage learners from Kindergarten to Grade 8.

Math Placemats:  Kindergarten Placemat 1,  Kindergarten Placemat 2, Kindergarten Placemat 3,  Grades 1 - 3 Placemats, Grades 4 - 6 Placemats, Placemats in French

Math Placemats are one-page activity pages that are rich in puzzles, riddles, questions and simple visuals to engage children at the kitchen table, during long car rides or during indoor recess.  They are great take-alongs to restaurants and events to occupy children in meaningful ways by practicing math content from all the strands: Number Sense, Geometry, Patterning, Data Management, Probability and Measurement while having fun.

Family Fun with Math Calendar

This calendar provides a math question, activity or challenge for every day of the year.  Some can be done quickly and others take more time, and no special equipment is needed to complete the questions.  The theme is nursery rhymes like Little Bo Peep, Old Mother Hubbard and Humpty Dumpty and scenarios that involve lost sheep, broken shapes and cupboard contents provide the context for the problems posed each month.  We have tried to provide something for the entire family, so you will find puzzles for the Kindergartner as well as problems for the sixth grader, and for every problem, there is a solution at the back of the calendar.  The problems, puzzles and activities span all five strands of Ontario's elementary mathematics curriculum.

Mathematical Melodies 

Developed by the Community Outreach Centre, Mathematical Melodies (the songs, lyrics and lesson plans)  help students understand the complex world of math in a fun, lighthearted and ‘fine tuned’ manner.  Providing games, hands on activities, children’s literature connections and multi media resources to encourage children to construct relationships and ideas with mathematical content is our bonus to you.

Mathakazam Video
Mathakazam! is a 30 minute puppet play created by the Community Outreach Centre that illustrates the ways in which math impacts daily life and why it is ‚cool‛ to like and do math. In two weeks, over 2000 children from 27 schools will have participated in performances of the play that featured four teacher candidate puppeteers.

Mathakazam Resources

MATHAKAZAM! is play is about two children, Mathew and Mathilda, and their mother, an unusual professor who loves all things math-y! Much of the play is self-explanatory and will require little explanation.  However, there is a dream sequence in which some “Flat Stanley” style puppets are introduced.  These puppets introduce some people who have used math in interesting ways: Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Harriet Tubman and Wilson Bentley.  There are also references to Canadian figure skaters, Virtue and Moir and Gulliver (in the land of Lilliput).  To help you to help your children to recognize these characters and why they are famous for math, a teacher candidate, Kathia Cordoba, has generated the attached resource materials for you.  Meet these famous characters and see how math is everywhere in the world around us. 

Science Teaching Videos

The Mathematics, Science and Technological Education (MSTE) Group at the Faculty of Education has sponsored the creation of a series of science videos for junior grade teachers. Each video is comprised of a series of easy-to-follow vignettes that show a science educator, Jovan Groen, performing "hands on" science activities that can be easily replicated in any classroom with minimal equipment. Jovan not only demonstrates the activity , but provides background information and a materials list. Videos are available for the following units of study: grade 4 Light and Sound; grade 4 Pulleys and Gears; grade 5 Forces; grade 5 Matter; grade 5 Human Body Systems; grade 6 Flight and grade 6 Space. Teachers are invited to use them free of charge.

History of Biology

The History of Biology project is one of the community outreach projects that has been developed and implemented by The Let’s Talk Science team at Queen’s University.  History of Biology is an interactive online science scavenger hunt that invites Grades 10 and 11 students to experience the history of biology through the scientists and the impact their discoveries had, and continue to have on our world.  To learn more about the project, please view The History of Biology trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGzFV4t51Ow
The activity is designed to facilitate critical thinking, develop problem-solving skills, and engage students in scientific methods of deduction and discovery by taking players through topics of cell theory, microscopes, evolution, mechanisms of heredity, central dogma of genetics, genomics and the future of biological science. During the project Queen's Let’s Talk Science volunteers and SpongeLab Interactive (an internationally acclaimed organization that focuses on the integration of cutting edge technologies for teaching and learning purposes) employees will be available to help guide students through the game levels, missions and engage them in online discussions.
For more information, please contact talksci@queensu.ca or the Community Outreach Centre at community.outreach@queensu.ca

A teacher resource package for the primary grades

This resources is intended to be a starting point to help your class apply what they have learned in the Geometry and Spatial Sense strand to real-life situations. There are 10 pictures included, and each one has suggestions for the teacher regarding how to use each picture in a Grade One, Two, or Three classroom. The pictures will hopefully offer your students a way to engage themselves further in learning by applying their mathematical knowledge about shapes, polygons, and three-dimensional figures to a new situation – recognizing geometry when they see it in the real world.

Curriculum Integration: Can you believe that THIS is Math?

Presented by Dr. Lynda Colgan, Queen’s University at the Summer Institute for Elementary Teachers 2012 taking place from July 17 to 19 at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, ON.

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