When a great man walks among fools, the fools know him not.

This is what my guru looks like.

This has got to be one of my favorite humans currently on the planet.  And I've never met him in person.  I aim to remedy that in April.

Turns out lemons are sour.

Money is not a measure of greatness, heart is...although this guy has made more money in a year than many people reading this will make in their lifetime.  This is a good ol' Montana boy who has done good. If you have a message you want to get out to the world, (mine just so happens to be math), this would be a good guy to pay attention to,  he also has several books and eCourses that you might enjoy whether you think you have a message or not. Currently I'm plowing thru the Motivation Manefesto.

This video is particularly relevant to the last several trainings I've had and quite a few emails where sadly parents admit they pretty much have forgotten to how to have fun, certainly can't believe that MATH can be fun, and that learning SHOULD be fun, and that life in general should also be fun. Although they see that drilling and grilling their little kids on math facts might be counter productive they don't know what else to do because that's they way they were taught and that's the only experience they had with math...mostly negative...and certainly that's the prevailing wisdom in public schools. In fact MORE TESTING seems to be their only solution.

"Don't I need worksheets?" "Shouldn't I get some workbooks?" "What do mean just play with the blocks?"

I mean just play with the blocks. Just play math. Explore. Discover. Together.


For those that attended the last training for 20 bucks (which worked out to 5 bucks an hour) and had fun, do as I say, not as I do...

Friday Trainings have become "a thing"...and this next Friday I'm going to up the price a little bit to $25.00 but defer payment...instead of paying me directly I invite you to join my Kiva team. AFTER you loan the money out and you get paid back you can pay me the funds or you can loan it out again and we'll call it even or you can pay me and I'll loan it out but I'd rather have more team members and it's more fun if you get to chose the loan and the country. I obviously like farming and Ecuador but maybe you'd rather it go someplace else. You could also just join the Kiva team (or some other Kiva team) if you wanted. Wouldn't hurt nothin'.

Last few trainings have been pretty cool, USA, Romania, Canada, Gambia represented. I would love to see a training with all five continents represented one day...soon. Also look for details of a Saturday training instead of a Friday training soon...several people have said they want to come but because of work or kids or whatever it makes Fridays impossible. It sure ain't the money.

Also Brendan has many more GREAT videos and I would encourage anybody doing anything to make time to watch a few (or all) of them.

Details can be found on my FB page here on this blog and soon on the website since it has become a thing....you might want to attend one of the trainings themselves because be assured what happens there and what gets edited and put on the parent teacher training page are two very different things...people are getting a lot out of the training page however...and for the money you can't beat it.

Base 10 Blocks & Algebra Teach The Basics

The points of this post are manifold.

One, for those who are thinking they might want to start a tutoring business, DO IT. NO ONE is out there teaching kids math like this...well, I can't really say that anymore because actually quite a few people are now using these techniques to teach math...more than six years ago when I started this nonsense anyway, but you know what I mean.  The number of people doing it this way is very, very SMALL. You should have no trouble finding a few parents who understand that giving their child, particularly if the child happens to be female, a real head start and are willing to pay well you for it. Don't undercut yourself.

You can charge decent money because of this, especially if you have been to several Friday trainings and/or have gotten passwords and watched all the videos (and played along with your blocks) on the Parent Teacher Training Page (there are quite a few more Hours about to added there BTW). Ask yourself where else are they going to get this? From me? I can only do so many students at a time and my time for teaching students is just about come to an end...I am interested in training teachers and ultimately training trainers and master trainers to replace myself. 

Two, when teaching older students who have massive holes like this child in their math knowledge and basic math facts it is important to preserve the child's self esteem. With younger remedial students playing like this is cool because in kid culture "everybody knows algebra is HARD" so although we are factoring polynomials not so much to learn algebra and distributive theory but more to learn addends and multiplication, the older students don't feel "dumb" because after all we are still doing algebra, and the younger students feel smart because after all we are still doing algebra. Get it? I think you will find this is a recurring theme here on this blog. I use third and fourth power algebra to accomplish this too.

Three, it should become abundantly clear after watching this video that having a calculator in hand wouldn't help him factor an expression like x² + 9x + 18...you have to know your addends, which will make repetitive addition (which some call multiplication) easy and fast and will bring home the concept that numbers are made up of other numbers and that there are many ways to express any number...as the sum of two (or more) numbers as the difference of two numbers as the product of two (or more) numbers or as the quotient of two numbers...

I also have another video with a 7 year old where you can see having played with square numbers and being familiar with addends and ratios and fractions makes trig EASY. But if you can't even recognize a square number when you see one...well...an "F" is much more likely than an "A".



Get a password, get a couple of my books and get going. Trainings on Fridays has become "a thing", cost is 20 bucks for 1 to 4 hours, lately they have been going for 4...if you come for an hour it's $20 if you come for all for hours it's $20, starts at 8am HST...you need gmail vid chat and you need to have the video plug in ALREADY INSTALLED. Email me for more info. I know you think 4 hours is a long time but trust me: time flies when you are having math...ask anybody that has come it won't feel like four hours.

Fractions Teach Multiplication Using Base 10 Blocks

This video is pretty self explanatory, so I won't put too much here in the way of words. People don't read these posts much anyway just look at the pictures and watch the videos...so:


But for those interested in a little more in the way of training for parents or teaches, with little kids you don't need to write symbols to start.  (By little kids I mean 6 and under.) Just do what you see here and talk about it. Later the symbols will make sense when we write them. Don't forget to spend some time DRAWING them too.  (Look at the second excerpt for more on this on the training entry page.)  Lastly, do symbols...but this kid is 17 so we went directly from manipulatives to symbols...because he's paying by the hour and it takes too long to draw and label them although it is a very worthwhile step, I told him to do it at home. I had other things I wanted to do in the hour. The idea is to teach concepts but this child needs work on multiplication...multiplication will make all of his math easier to understand because there is no time lost on computation (if multiplication is easy and fast, if not the math problem is compounded because they have to think about multiplication AND whatever the problem is too...once they have the multiplication down as Forest would say, "that's one less thing."

Here again I want to drive home the point that all we are doing is counting and basically I am teaching him to count and count quickly using fractions manipulatives. Counting quickly like this is called multiplication. The fractions are also discovered...and equivalent fractions understood and reducing fractions will not be difficult when we introduce that concept later...only then we will be using division instead of multiplication. I hope you can see the rectangles...


Introduce skip counting early and sing songs and play and this whole problem can be avoided...too many teen-agers have this exact same problem, they are having trouble with math (particularly algebra) because they can't even multiply and having a calculator doesn't help. In order to see relationships, ratios and multiples it is imperative that they know their multiplication tables bare ass minimum out to 9x9, out to 12x12 better than that and out to 20x20 (yes, 400 facts) best of all. We went thru a little period there where well meaning but horribly misguided math teachers tried to say that with the advent of cheap calculators students didn't need to know multiplication by rote memory. OPPS.

They were trying to spare students the pain of memorization and drill. I agree about taking the pain out of mathematics but not with taking the learning of multiplication out of the mathematics, which is why we didn't spend the whole hour on this...I assure you drill, worksheets, and flash cards will turn the kids off faster than you can say "modern mathematics teaching in America is an utter failure." But if you play games, sing songs, skip count, and do fun math activities starting at an EARLY AGE, multiplication can be mastered without tears, muss or fuss.

I have a book (my Curious Counter's Compendium) you can get for practically NO MONEY that will help you start teaching math to your toddlers, and another one (my Subtraction Manual) you can get for NO MONEY at all.  More manuals are being worked on as we speak, there will one day be 11 in all.

Side note: We measured the distance he walks using the odometer on my car and it was just over two and a half miles, one way. Math is either important or it isn't.

More side note: AFTER you go thru a lot of posts on this blog, videos on youtube and of course my website you might want to get a password...

Simple Base Ten Blocks Teach Many Math Concepts.

One of the math moms on facebook posted this pic. 

My response:

Nice, now change the game and make it so he can only use one three...then the other ones have to be a two and a one or three ones, you might mention right now they are all three plus zero and it's more fun to make combinations...same with the four, only use one four and the others have to be addends for four and so on also nothing says you only have to use 4 on the corners, you can use 5 or 6 or 7 or more pillars...then you can play "jenga" an see if you can take pillars out without knocking the whole thing down...then when does fall down just build it again and see who can take the most pillars out before it falls...Also, make a video of it and maybe you could win something.

Many math concepts can be learned with just this one simple exercise. You can slide a 2 into the level that he built with three's and the concept that 2 is "smaller than" three is easily seen...in math we could say less than...and we could show the symbols on a white board if we wanted to but at this age playing blocks and verbal reinforcement is enough. You are creating a math rich environment, where several of the senses are used to learn math and basic math concepts like more and less and addition and of course subtraction.

The mind absorbs all this then later (days, weeks, months or even years) this experience can be drawn upon to make sense of these symbols: 2 < 3...

You could put on the skip count CD or multiplication rock vids on youtube in the background and sing along as you skip count the threes he has used. PLAY, make teaching addition fun; little kids love to sing and they don't much care if you can carry a tune or not as long as you are making a joyful noise.

Anyhow make a vid of your kids playing math and you might win some cool stuff. UPDATE: this part is over but you should still check out primal math for some cool apps...Zombie Fish Bits is fun....

If you'd like a FREE manual on showing how to teach even very young children a super easy way to subtract click this link to my Supremely Simple Subtraction manual. A new Games and Activities Manual is in the works but it will be a while so meantime use the old one. (Takes a while to load so give it a minute...)

Another math mom on facebook posted this pic. 

My response:
Excellent...! Now you can talk to him about the 9 in the corner...you could flip the blocks over and count 1 hundred, 6 tens and 9 units...you could talk about square roots and square numbers playfully with the 9 and the 169...and of course the polynomial...x² + 6x + 9...the square root is one side which is x + 3....and of course (x+3)² = (x+3)(x+3) = x² + 6x + 9 and you talk about economy of symbol...that we don't need to write it twice...you could talk about 13² = (13)(13) = 169...you could have him draw a simple picture of it...and talk about these things while he's making his drawing...note I say could you don't have to...you could write some symbols and show him how those symbols describe his creation the same way words can describe a brown cow...and you do it casually, not drilling him not formal instruction just,  "hey...look at these green ones there--they make a square and we can count the sides or one side...hey look at that! You made all those blocks into a square can you count the sides? What's the blue one called?"

If you are on the base ten side he should say, "10...and three units." Or something like that. And you could say, "what's the name for one ten and 3 units...?"

If they are on the smooth side and you are in base x, the blue one's name is x and three units...

A ton of math concepts can be taught off of this one rectangle...you don't need to cover all of them at once...just a few at a time. Check this post out, it talks about all the things you can use this simple rectangle (square) for, when it comes to teaching math concepts.

Now build one that's 14 or x+4 squared...and then 15...or maybe he wants to make a different shape with his 6x...and make it (x+2)(x+3) or some other combination for 6, 5+1, 4+2, 3+3...still 6x but now a different number fits in the corner...just play math, bigger is funner.

Password Sale Extravaganza IS OVER.

There is was a SALE going on at The House Math!
It's birthday month for both me and my eldest, who just turned TEN.If you got here because I sent you an email, don't worry there won't be very many more emails to you from me again after this. But I figured you'd want to know about this sale.


Here's your chance to SAVE on passwords for a very limited time.

All PAU.


Passwords come in two flavors at the moment...

1. The site wide pass that gets you EVERYWHERE except the Parent Teacher Training page
2. The password for the Parent Teacher Training page

You also have the option to get an Annual or a Lifetime pass.
If you get a Lifetime pass, you get BOTH.
If you need a rain check you can email me and perhaps we can work something out.

If you can't come up with $150.00 (reg $250) for lifetime or $50.00 (reg $89) for annual all at once, I also have the option for you to break a normally priced password up into TEN payments. In other words subscriptions are NOT on sale.

One time payments are at basically 40% off.
There won't be another sale like this all year!.
There will be another sale when the younger turns ten, but prices will have gone up by then...and there will be even more password pages and more stuff on the pages that are already there.

Vids (and more) get added to the Parent Teacher training page pretty regularly. As we speak there are several hours that are being edited and added to various pages.
Several more hours will be added on the training page and more trig on the brand new Trigonometry page...this page alone being worth the price of a password all by itself.
Another page that is worth the price alone is the percentages page, as well as the page on Pi...and circles.

Check out these two links for Paypal buttons and more explanations.

http://crewtonramoneshouseofmath.blogspot.com/2015/03/flash-sale.html

http://crewtonramoneshouseofmath.blogspot.com/2015/01/base-ten-block-subscription.html


PS: I see I  made some errors in sending out the link with the wrong attachment to some of you so I may try and send you people that already have the SSS manual the Curious Counter's Compendium instead...also I see my email lists are incomplete and might even possibly be a little mixed up, but I'm working on it (and by "I", I mean My Girl Tuesday)...because I don't want to send out email to people who don't want email from me or for example people who already have a lifetime password an offer for a lifetime password...if you want OFF my lists send an email that says UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line, if you want ON the list (and you haven't signed up already at the house of math, or bought product or signed up for the SSS pdf) send an email that says ADD ME in the subject line.  Very soon I will be getting an email program to deal with all this and later this year (or early next year) my training site should be up and running.  And as I look at this page I see it too needs updating...lol...but the email address is the correct one...

Another Inductee To The 100% Club.

Kid comes off and on but figured better on than off...has to walk 2 and a half miles to get to class. Has discovered it's worth it. Base 10 blocks really do work for Trig too.

He actually looks pleased.   This is how we do at Crewton Ramone's House Of Math.  I have more F o A stories than you can shake you finger at. Check these testimonials. He was getting less than 50%'s when I met him. Then he learned some basic concepts and sure enough 100%.  People said on this one I should have taken before and after photos of him too...because his demeanor has also changed radically along with the grades.  Ask any kid what feels better, F or A. 

Anyhow here is the short vid...


The Password Protected Trig page is up! I can't guarantee you'll get 100%'s or even A's but I do guarantee this page explains trig in a manner that you can understand. Garret edited the vid of he class I did with him (I think editing the vid on trig made the test easy too)...but right now a diligent trig student could use the Trig Page to pass...I can't guarantee anything because every student is different but a regular kid should be able to go there start watching videos and clear a whole lot of things up FAST. Things that many find confusing. There are vids on the entry page that you should find quite useful if you are a beginner....just think, basically 50 bucks could be the diff between pass and fail and for some kids the diff between A and B...ALSO there is now How to Teach Trig to 8 Year Olds. hat page also has a FREE lesson on it too.

Again I defy you to find lessons explained like this where kids can put it all together conceptually anywhere on the internet at any price...take advantage of the FREE lessons first. Then consider a password.

Find me on Facebook and Instagram...

Get  a FREE book to help you get started exploring and discovering the wondrous world of mathematics as presented via base ten blocks.  Just click this link to get Supremely Simple Subtraction delivered directly into your inbox.

Flash Sale.

If someone wanted to get me this for MY birthday that would be nice.

Sale Ends 12 March 2015..
SALE IS OVER THANKS EVERYBODY!!!!

Next sale won't be for quite sometime. I have no idea when mortco will have another sale. I wanted to have the trig page finished in time for the start of this sale but didn't quite make it...might be done by Tuesday tho...also passwords are going to change at the end of the month...as always just email me for the new one(s)...

When you order I will send a link or links to the paypal address you used...click the link(s) for the password. Next sale prices will be higher than these because there will be more stuff then than there is now. Early adopters are rewarded.

There is about two more hours of training being edited now that will be added to the PT training page...it was the fractions training I did on Friday. I will do another training this Friday for those who could not attend the last one...more fractions but using different manipulatives.

Also I will indeed be in Santa Clara in April...may try to set up a live training there...or somewhere nearby...or maybe in Las Vegas, just because it's cheap to fly there and meeting rooms are also cheap. I have lived by the standard when in doubt do both but I can only be gone for so long and from the 16-20th I will be BUSY. And after that I know I will be dying to get home to implement what I came for..but if it's not too much hassle a couple of (separate) days of training could also be thrown into the mix...stay tuned.

Meantime enjoy these prices. And tell you friends. Whining will not help if they miss it. If you need a rain check email me and PERHAPS we can work something out. Last time I had a password sale several people were stressed out over the holidays and tapped out from gift giving and needed a couple of weeks for their next paycheck...I get it. Just ask if you need to...otherwise enjoy the sale.