Where Do I Start?

Oh, that's longer than a tweet my friend.

Jim Doherty, @mrdardy to you, recently got a lot of great responses to this (basically) question on Twitter (link to conversation). So I want to archive them someplace. My preservice HS teachers have a pretty good collection, but maybe I should think how I use them. The lists below are in order of how frequently I use them. I'm a weird one, though, so it's not meant to be a ranking on quality.

So I want to teach a new lesson about something. I go to...

Search

• John Stevens' MTBoS Search Engine bit.ly/MTBOSS. Helps me find that thing I read that I should have bookmarked and who was it... 
• Robert Kaplinsky's Problem Based Lesson search engine. More focus for when you need it.

The Big Ones

• NRICH - Cambridge's problem site that continues to grow and expand. Searchable by topic, age level, and challenge level.
• Illustrative Mathematics, free ever-more-complete curriculum 
• Shells Center/Mathematics Assessment Project, good as lessons, problems or assessments. Often with sample student work.
• Georgia Standards, even if they're sadly going away from them. A complete, free Common Core curriculum, generally of more consistent quality than Engage NY.
• Mathalicious, paysite but worth it.
• Math Forum, in process of changing to being an NCTM program/ally/thing. I have high expectations.

Community Collections

• Fawn Nguyen's Visual Patterns and Math Talks. I use Visual patterns a lot. Problems, investigations, resource for students... Math Talks I should use more. Great bits of dialogue and student thinking, on simple but rich questions.
• Michael Pershan's Math Mistakes. Valuable as a teacher for thinking about misconceptions, good reasource for mistakes for students to look at to try to fix or look for reasoning.
• Dan Meyer's Google spreadsheet of 3 Acts lessons 
• Mary Bourassa's Which One Doesn't Belong. Built on the idea in Christopher Danielson's great shapes book, but expanded to many content areas. These are hard to make and great to have collected. 
• Open Middle problems by Nanette, Robert and Bryan.
• Desmos Activity Bank (new but I'm confident in greatness-to-come)
• MTBoS Activity Bank (spreadsheet; we need something like this. Maybe this is it?)
• #MTBoS collection of community efforts (some of the above and more...). Estimation 180 and Would You Rather? are both good sources of warm up/cool down questions.

Amazing Personal Work

• Don Steward's Median. Lots of lessons, often with an interesting visual component, and very clever. Awesome variations on a them within each set of problems or activities.
• James Tanton's Curriculum Resources. YouTube videos that are problem & thinking centered. I like that he separates the problem, and gives learners a chance to do it.
• Brian Mark's Yummy Math, real real-life problems.

Outstanding Curation

• Geof Krall's Problem Based Curriculum Maps, MS and HS, traditional and integrated. I use these regularly and recommend them frequently. So important, and done so well.
• Sam Shah's Virtual Filing Cabinet, so many great lessons from the #MTBOS. Sam's taste is impeccable.
• Tina Cardone's #matheme page (bunches of math teachers writing on selected, typically practical, themes.)
• Jo Morgan @mathsjem's Resourceaholic. Weekly blogposts highlighting up to 5 new resources for teachers.

More Teachers' Virtual Filing Cabinet (Link Collections)

• Nathan Kraft's VFC
• Jim Doherty's VFC 
• Timon Piccini's VFC
• Bowman Dickson's VFC
• Kristin Fouss's Diigo links 
• Wendy Menard's VFC 
• Chris Hunter's VFC 
• Lisa Bejarano's VFC of Warm Up Activities

Miscellaneous

• Inside Mathematics' Problems of the Month. Generally interesting, sorted by grade level. More at the Inside Mathematics site than these, too.
• Brilliant.org. User submitted problems in multiple choice format. Inconsistent, but some are... well, you know.

New to Me (both from Jim's tweet, but solid recommenders.)

• Math Bits via Wendy Menard
• APlusClick via Megan Schmidt, problems sorted by grade and content

Games

• I'll plug my math games page here, especially the links to others' games and review games.
• James Cleveland's spreadsheet, trying to find math games for major content topics throughout high school. 

And that's not all, folks.  But at least it's a start, right? Please feel free to mention your starting points in the comments.

P.S. Glen Waddell wrote a nice Teachers Share with Teachers response to a poor NYT article. It has a lot of great resources with descriptions.

Math Teachers at Play 61

Researching 61 as a number tells us it's not just prime, but is a twin prime, a cuban prime, the 9th Mersenne prime exponent, and a Pillai prime. That's primo prime pedigree. It's a Keith number and thrice Fortunate. (Fortunate numbers are pretty interesting and the subject of an open conjecture.) It's a centered square number (1+4+8+12+16+20), a centered hexagonal number (1+6+12+18+24) and a centered decagonal number (1+10+20+30); mostly because it's neighbor 60 is so nice. (Did you see the 60th Math Teachers at Play?) Is there a reason that \( \sum 4n \), \( \sum 6n \) and \( \sum 10n \) overlap at 60? But the fact that really caught my eye was that 61 is an Euler Zig Zag number. How cool can a number get?

The Euler Zig Zag number for n is the number of alternating permutations (up-down-up-down arrangements) on n ordered objects.  For example 2 is the Euler Zig Zag number for a set of 3 objects. Désiré André was one of the first to study these, and I hadn't known about him before. He was a real leader of his mathematical community, serving as the president of a math lover society that exists to this day, the Société Philomathique de Paris. I want a t-shirt. How many elements are in the set for which there are 61 Zig Zags? Combinatorist Robert Dickaus has the answer and some great visualizations of these alternating permutations.

dicktay2000

Early Learners
Preschool Math Ideas  from  Lilac at Learners in Bloom.   "Preschool math can be so creative and fun.  This post is a round-up of some of my favorite math activities from the past year (twins age 2.5-3.5)." Lots of fun kinesthetic number experiences shared here.

Make Me Dinner from Jennifer Bardsley at Teaching My Baby to Read.  "Here's a deceptively simple math game to play with little ones. It works on loads of math skills through pretend play." Working on cardinality and comparison.

mag3737

Elementary
Center Idea For Building Addition Fluency at Zoom Zoom Classroom.  "This blog post highlights a product I created.  The idea is to provide children with extra practice with solving addition facts in both vertical and horizontal form." CCSS.Math.Content.1.OA.C.6  There's velcro, but I'm not sure I understand the point of this center.

Skip-bo Addition Game (or The Funnest-est Bestest Math Game Ever) from Amy at Ita Vita.   "I wanted a fun way to practice addition with my son and came up with this one on the spur of the moment. It was such a hit. It can be modified to make it harder or easier, and variations could be invented for subtraction as well, or possibly even multiplication or division."

EDITOR'S SUBMISSION: Peeps Math with Tabitha from Christopher Danielson at Overthinking My Teaching. A slice of number thinking, representation and a teaching demonstration all rolled up in one.

Eva the Weaver

Algebra
A Visual Approach to Simplying Radicals from Chris Hunter at Reflections in the Why.  "I'm submitting this blog post because I think the method discussed is bloody brilliant. I can get away with saying that because my colleague created it, not me. When you see it, you'll think 'Why haven't I seen this before?' " Perfectly fits his blog title!

Flippable Fun with Equations from Jennifer Smith-Sloane at 4mula Fun. Jennifer shares one of her Interactive Notebook (INB) on multistep equations.

If you like the INB approach, be sure to check out the resources at the Julie Reulbach's Math Wiki, too. (Among the many, many resources.)

Using the Area of a Rectangle to Derive the Area of a Triangle  from Guillermo Bautista, Jr  at Proofs from the Book poses some questions and shares some visualizations about the familiar triangle area formula.  He also shared Representing the Sum and Difference of Two Squares, another visual representation.
       
Understanding Slope  from Jamie Riggs at Miss Math Dork shares an early slope activity she did with her students in the resource room that seemed to help the idea develop for them.

Half-your-age-plus-seven Rule from John Chase at Random Walks.   "I saw this graph illustrating the half-your-age-plus-seven rule for dating ages  and I immediately thought about how this is both (1) a wonderful application of systems of inequalities, and (2) a wonderful application of inverse functions. It turns out that that 80-year-old has a *range* of datable ages from 47 at the lowest to 146 at the highest (good luck with that!). I had never thought of it that way."

EDITOR'S SUBMISSION: More Imbalance Problems from Paul Salomon at Lost in Recursion. I love these elegant and elemental problems for getting at some really powerful algebraic thinking. Plus he's hosting a contest. Check out the whole series.

Why is division of 0 Undefined? at Mathematization is a quick spreadsheet approach to divergence of 12/x at zero. 

Domain and Range  from Shaun at Math Concepts Explained. Shaun tries to explain these ideas in student friendly language.  (But be careful!) In a similar vein he steps through the procedure of Understanding Point Slope Form.


Geometry
Squares at Five Triangles Mathematics.  "This is a middle school level problem that requires some visual and elementary math skills, but does not require the Pythagorean theorem." Good rearrangement problem with some room for generalization. What determines the size of the center square?

This actually inspired me to make a GeoGebra sketch to generalize this with a dynamic representation.  Download or mobile-ready applet. Thought this dissection was the essential idea in several proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem.

Speaking of inspiring me to do geometry, have you checked out the amazing art at Geometry Daily?

Oh, and what about the Pythagorean Theorem puzzle/proof Daniel Hardisky shared at Alexander Bogolmolny's Cut the Knot? He first posted it in Alexander's Facebook page for Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles.  (I made a sketch for that, too. I may have a problem.)

mag3737

Probability
Probability Tree Diagrams as Puzzles!  from Bon Crowder  at Math Four.  "I teach probabiity trees in Finite Math as well as Stats. And students either love them or hate them. Treating probability trees as puzzles helps them to practice and then see the value of them." Two free downloads with 11 probability tree puzzles.

Puzzle Break!

Quento is a fun sum and difference puzzle app for iOS or Android. Free trial version, 99¢ full.

Here's an example. The 2 number and 3 number paths are shown. No reusing a number. How would you make 8? I just discovered there's a 5 number option!

I made one for the carnival at right. My previous turns hosting were 47, 36, 26 and 22, so...

Thomas Hawk

Teaching
Spot the mistake from Colleen Young at Mathematics, Leanring and Web 2.0.   "A collection of resources which allow students to mark work and correct errors. This is something they enjoy doing and can lead to some great discussions." Colleen highlights good TES resources for this idea, but I can't help linking Michael Pershan's Math Mistakes here also.

Start with One Straight Line  at Moebius Noodles.  A post in which Noodles contributor, Malke Rosenfeld, talks about using blue painters' tape to create an environment that fosters mathematical exploration.

EDITOR'S SUBMISSION: Speaking of Malke, do not miss her post at The Map Is Not the Territory on Adventurous Professional Learning, with a great video about what success looks like in her classroom.

What Goes Here? from David Coffey at DeltaScape shares an outstanding algebra lesson and teacher-thinking from one of our novice teachers, Alyssa Boike.

Mathematics: The Science of Patterns from Guillermo at Mathematics and Multimedia. "A post celebrating the beauty of mathematics through patterns."

This is where I'll throw in a plug for Fawn Nguyen's single serving Visual Patterns site. Many great problems.

On the theme 'Mathematicians Ask Questions', Denise Gaskins at Let's Play Math, the founder of this here carnival here, looks at questions for teachers or students to ask.

Subtraction with Borrowing: The Video  from Julie at Craft Knife.   "Faced with a kid unenthusiastic about learning subtraction with borrowing, I asked her to film a video tutorial to teach other kids how to do it. With that, I immediately found myself with an enthusiastic, highly engaged kiddo..." Julie then goes on to use the video for some analysis of the teacher's understanding.

Let's Get Talking  from Oluwasanya Awe at MatheMazier.   "I'm a student and I have worked as a tutor for about 3 years and I just thought I should 'pour out' some of the cries of people I have taught. I want this post to bring to mind, the problem children face in Mathematics and also to question teachers." A dozen short student complaints and misconceptions. He's also wondering about Points, Shapes and Space.

Morris Motorcycles

Recreational
Math & Logic Puzzles from Sue VanHattum at Math Mama Writes.  "I went to a Pi Day Puzzle Party and had a blast. Here are the puzzles. (No pi involved.)" Very fun story from Sue.

10 Fun Parent-Tested Math Board Games from Caroline Mukisa at Maths Insider.  "Board games are a great way to make math practice painless. For those of you fellow board games fans, here are 10 recommended math board games, along with what parents have to say about them."

Math Game: Use Dominoes to Practice Number Bonds from Jeremy at Make Learning Fun.

Encouraging a Love of Math from Tricia Stohr-Hunt at Bookish Ways.   "I teach preservice teachers and spend a lot of time thinking about ways to get kids to love (or at least like) math. This post is about some of the things I suggest with links to additional resources." Puzzles, art, books and more, with loads of links.

How to Choose Your Marriageable Date from Yan Kow Cheong at Singapore Math: on numerical patterns in dates. (Reminded me of Dave Coffey's meditation on Pi Day - that every day should be a math day.)

Math Art - Geometry  from Julie at Highhill Homeschool: Many kids are very artistic and find learning geometry through art very rewarding. Geometric math art is always close to my heart. Julie is using activities from Mathematics in Space and Time by John Blackwood. Julie also shared Secret Codes    "Secret codes are really complicated patterns. They are fun to figure out and good for building creative math skills."

Practice
Basic operations worksheets generator UPDATED!  from Maria at Homeschool Math Blog. She's added more customizable features to their free random problem generator. (Please find a creative way to use such problems.)

Soggy Math from Ritsumei at Baby Steps.  "Wherein we have an impromptu math lesson in the swimming pool."

61?
That brings MTAP61 to a close. I think we're still looking for a host for 62, and I highly recommend the opportunity. Just want to submit a post? Here's the link!

But I can't close without acknowledging that we all know the number 61 can really only mean one thing in the spring...

See Mid TN

Roger Maris hit the unimaginable 61st home run in 1961 to break Babe Ruth's single season record. Some people still consider it to be the record as those who have broken it were allegedly using chemical enhancements. I promise you a clean blog carnival with no unnatural math enhancing compounds. Of course, there's math in those stats: what portion of his hits were HR, how to compare his season of 61 to Ruth's season of 60 (in only 151 games), how do they compare to modern hitters, how hard is it to hit a home run... it could go on as long as the whole season. Maris even has some advice that's just as good in math as in baseball: "You hit home runs not by chance but by preparation."

Image credits: Flickr users noted on their photographs. I think I made all the other ones!

Then maybe you'd be kind enough to try the adding and subtracting integers game I made in Scratch? And give me feedback?

Here's the game, and here's the post about it.

SBG Resources

From Rainbowcatz @ Flickr

I was gathering Standards Based Grading (SBG) resources for a colleague and thought that would be worth sharing.  Maybe this should be a LiveBinder? There's a definite math focus to my selections below, those it's not strict. Many people refer to SBG as Standards Based Assessment and Reporting (SBAR), which gets the whole 'grade' idea right out.

People: (Name links to Twitter)

• Jason Buell - SBG resources that includes the SBG galas.
• Shawn Cornally - collected resources at his blog
• Riley Lark - SBG blogposts
• Frank Noschese - SBG blogposts

Fundamentals and Further:

• Ed Leadership article: Seven Reasons for Standards-Based Grading by Patricia Scriffiny
• SBG Beginners Wiki, which also has math skills lists , started by Elissa Miller
• SBG page at the MSmathwiki.
• Blue Harvest - Shawn's SBG software
• ActiveGrade - Riley's SBG software

Twitter discussion

• #sbar - find more SBG folk, or people trying it in your discipline, by a Twitter search.
• #sbarbook - book group that 'meets' weekly for discussion about a particular book on assessment. Doesn't look like this semester's book is very engaging, though.

For completeness sake, here's my 2 (so far) SBG posts. Hey, this makes 3! If there are more examples of SBG in college, especially college math, please help me find them.

Resource Round Up - October

Photo por pepetomo @ Flickr

Carnivals
Math and Multimedia Carnival 4 has been up for a bit.  Lots of good things, interesting entries and great 4 images.  I feel challenged, as it will be here next month.  (Quick, think of cool 5 stuff!)  I'm already getting some submissions, and I encourage you to submit your own items, of course, but also to share posts on blogs you follow that are good examples of the organizing idea.  What is the organizing idea?  Work that shows one or more of the following:

1. Connection between and among different mathematical concepts
2. Connections between math and real life; use of real-life contexts to explain mathematical concepts
3. Clear and intuitive explanation of topics not discussed intextbooks, hard to understand, or difficult to teach
4. Proofs of mathematical theorems in which the difficulty of the explanation is accessible to high school students
5. Intuitive explanation of higher math topics, in which the difficulty is accessible to high school students
6. Software introduction, review or tutorials
7. Integration of technology (Web 2.0, Teaching 2.0, Classroom 2.0), in teaching mathematics

Submit an article.

Math Teachers at Play is appearing tomorrow at Homeschool Bytes.  She did a really nice Adventure Edition.  With one of Denise's Alexandria Jones adventures, Mimi Yang's deduction without p's and q's, and Guillermo Bautista gets back to the root of probability in lotteries... check it out!

The puntifical Frank and Ernest, of course.

Inservice Links
I get the opportunity to work on occasion with the secondary math teachers in Allendale, which is a 1:1 school (laptop:student).  Mostly it's trying to support them as they integrate technology for their efficiency and student support.  I don't know as much about their tech as they do, mostly, and obviously they know their students better, too.  They do a great job at using the time together to mutually develop tech skills, share what they're doing and how, and fit in some rare 6-12 content discussions while they're at it.

Their requests ahead of time were about using Posterous and Examview.  On a trip to another local 1:1 school, someone had advocated Posterous, raising their curiosity.  Posterous' advantage over blogger and wordpress is the ability to update a blog through email.  An advantage for student projects or live blogging, but not really for a teacher's blog.  I found a few resources:

• One teacher's use of Posterous
• Posterous in education wiki
• The official Posterous blog

It turns out a couple of the teachers already use Weebly in a similar way to the other school's use of Posterous.  Weebly seems to have a few features specifically intended for teaching.

Examview is a program for generating assessments that allows you to create variant exams easily, and supports both review and test modes, as well as automatically gathering student data.  The resources I found:

• A neat Examview collection of samples aligned by NY content standards (close to ours)
• Examview support forums
• Examview sample question banks.  There's one for Michigan.  (Not math specific, but I'm assuming at least part of it is math.)

But the most effective use of the time was the teachers creating assessments and sharing tips and questions.  Beautiful to see learning like that in a tight community.

Other possibilities I shared for investigating:

• Teacher LED IWB resources (http://www.teacherled.com/all-interactive-whiteboard-resources/)
• Two wikis with IWB resources for K-8: SMART measurement and SMART geometry

• Blogs: Teach Science and Math with some good technology information;
  Dan Meyer, HS teacher with great curriculum resources, problems and ideas.  Shares everything.  Becoming famous quickly - partly because of his TEDx talk;
  Kate Nowak - amazingly honest teacher.  Great math teaching ideas.
  Maria Anderson - Muskegon CC teacher and amazing tech for math leader.  For example, check out her interactive mindmap on playing in math.  (LOTS of resources.)

• Consider using Twitter.  I know it might sound dumb, but it has connected me with almost too many great resources and ideas.
  Decent list of math teacher twitterers to check out.
  Angela Maier's guide to Twitter use.

• Math teacher wiki.  Rapidly growing resource of lessons, games, and ideas.  Check out the virtual filing cabinets if nothing else.
• My week at math/tech camp this summer

• Are you looking for computer math games?  Try Waker, Entanglement or a whole suite of them at Manga High.  (Last actually has some real curriculum potential.  Offers tracking data, easy class enrollment and lots of offered help.)

• If we don't get a chance to watch it in session: Sugata Misra's TED talk on students self-learning with computers.

If you know of any Examview resources, tips or tricks, I would love to hear about it by email, tweet or comment.

Recommended Reading

From the always entertaining Speed Bump cartoon.

I'm trying to develop a recommended reading list for my students. Not comprehensive, like for a library, but the place to start, first books to buy, etc. I thought with the carnival coming up, it might be a good time to beg suggestions, either for categories or books. Links lead to the best previews I could find, mostly Google Books.

Please leave your suggestions in the comments and I'll incorporate them and make note in the post. Books I've read I'll add to the main list, and the others I'll list below. Sue VanHattum (Math Mama Writes...) immediately added a bunch, and has a post on this topic, too.

The List

updated April 2010

Picture Books
Math Curse, Lane and Scieska: just the best math book ever written.
Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar, or anything by Mitsumasa Anno. Just charming books, and lovely besides.
Spaghetti and Meatballs For All, Marilyn Burns: my favorite of the eplicitly mathematical genre. Tang and Murphy have their place but Burns is the queen of the genre. Princess - Elinor Pinczes.

Of course there are many possible for this category. See a School Library Journal article about this. My colleague Char Beckmann has (co-)written several neat articles in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School on using these. And Teaching Children Mathematics frequently has articles on the topic.

Math Fiction
The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norman Juster
The Man Who Counted, by Malba Tahan
Flatland, by Edwin Abbott (full text!)
The Number Devil, by Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Dec 2010: Zachary Shiner at Irrational Cube has a nice list going for these.

Elementary Math Teaching
Making Sense: Teaching and Learning Mathematics with Understanding, Fennema, Carpenter, Hiebert, Fuson, et al.
Young Mathematicians at Work: Constructing Number Sense, Addition, and Subtraction, Fosnot and Dolk

Secondary Math Teaching
The Teaching Gap, Stigler and Hiebert

Math Teaching, General
What’s Math Got to Do With It? by Jo Boaler, motivates teaching significant mathematics and advises on teaching methodology, relating it to research.
A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginitive Life Form, Paul Lockhart.  Original essay available from Keith Devlin at the MAA.


Math Ed Research
Knowing and teaching elementary mathematics, Liping Ma
Experiencing school mathematics: traditional and reform approaches, Jo Boaler
Adding it up: helping children learn mathematics, Kilpatrick, Swafford, Findell
Mathematical Problem Solving by Alan Schoenfeld. Quite the academic tome, it's best to get from libraries. However Schoenfeld has a lot of the relevant materials available at his website.

Literacy Learning
Mosaic of Thought, 2nd ed., Keene and Zimmerman
To Understand, Keene
Teaching with Intention, Miller
The Whole Story, Brian Cambourne (out of print but still available used). If not reading the book, please at least read my favorite article on teaching. (Generously made freely available by The Reading Teacher.)

Thanks for any ideas you have. And I hope you maybe found one new book in the bunch, at least!

Reader Additions

Picture/Young Reader
Quack and Count by Keith Baker:board book
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, by Jean Lee Latham: fictionalized account of the 19th century life of Nathaniel Bowditch, actual author of the American Practical Navigator
How Hungry Are You?, by Donna Jo Napoli and Richard Tchen: sharing division context
Number Stories of Long Ago by David Eugene Smith (full text!)

Teachers
Hannah, Divided by Adele Griffin: story of a twice exceptional student
The Art and Craft of Problem-Solving, by Paul Zeitz 
Math Power: How to Help Your Child Love Math, Even If You Don't, by Patricia Kenschaft
Math: An American Phobia, by Marilyn Burns
The Art of Problem Posing, by Stephen Brown
What's Happening in Math Class? (2 volumes) edited by Deb Schifter
Math for Smarty Pants and The I Hate Math Book by Marilyn Burns
Reconstructing Mathematics Education by Schifter and Fosnot (immediately on my wishlist!)

About Math 
Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis:lots of (slightly twisted) history of math.
The Cat in Numberland by Ivar Ekeland: story of the cat who lives in the Hotel Infinity
Mathematics: A Human Endeavor by Harold Jacobs: delightful textbook
The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel: biography
Chances Are: Adventures in Probability by Michael and Ellen Kaplan: History, philosophy, science, and statistics all come together
Surreal Numbers by Donald Knuth: higher math based on a Conway problem
Euclid in the Rainforest by Joseph Mazur: Logic, infinity and probability
Powers of Ten, by Philip and Phylis Morrison: famous series of photographs/images

Mindstorms, by Seymour Papert
Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free by Robert and Ellen Kaplan
Anything by Martin Gardner

Math for Parents

One of my students from a looong time ago at Penn State surprised me with a phone call recently. He sked what might be a good resource for parents who want their children to grow up with a better attitude about math than they had. Great question, and there are surprisingly few resources for it. My top few are below:

1) NCTM: A Family's Guide: Fostering Your Child's Success in School Mathematics
(link leads to pdf of the full text). An overview of what content should be addressed and some tips for supporting your student.

2) David Whitin (et al), Living and Learning Mathematics: Stories and Strategies for Supporting Mathematical Learning (link goes to Amazon). For young elementary, helps you think about problem solving for that age child. The Whitin's spoke at this years Math in Action and received rave reviews from the teachers in attendance. See also their book on inquiry for young science learners and using literature in math classes.

3) Susan O'Connell, Now I Get It: Strategies for Building Confident and Competent Mathematicians, K-6 (link leads to Amazon). Really for teachers, so there's some whole classroom stuff that won't be relevant, but the majority is about real instruction that would be repeatable at home.

4) Making Sense: Teaching and Learning Mathematics with Understanding by all the leading elementary math researchers (link leads to Amazon). This book is very teacher oriented, but portrays such a nice sense of what is possible in the elementary math classroom, that you'll wonder why we're not moving towards this vision more convincingly. Parents reading this could develop very nice, high expectations of what their children's math education should look like. My pre-service elementary teacher students this summer will be reading this.

What resources do you like for parents? I'd be very interested to hear.