Welcome!

This site is focused on two areas of math education. The first area is math for young children, from toddlers starting to count, to children about to start pre-algebra. This site provides families with resources to make math education fun, relevant, and effective in their home.

Please check out Early Family Math at earlyfamilymath.org. This program provides a sequence of free activities, games, and puzzles for families to play with together for children ages 6 months to 6 years.

The second area concerns general ideas for math education in classes for elementary school through high school. I have given a lot of thought to problem-oriented approaches to math education, and I have included several essays in the blog section of this site. I hope you will find those essays thought provoking, and I hope you will add your own comments and thoughts.

Featured on this site are my three books: Dr. Wright’s Kitchen Table Math. These books are designed to help parents do math with their children. Beyond these books, this site contains resource lists of math books to read for fun with your child, books that have puzzles or teaching ideas, mathematical games that are fun and that teach math skills, and links to helpful math education sites around the internet.

I hope you find this site useful. If you have comments, questions, or additional ideas for resources, I would love to hear from you!

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Kitchen Table Math Books

These three books provide step-by-step guides to how you can help your child develop good math skills and do well in school. They also include activities and games so that you and your child can have fun while exploring these early stages of your child’s mathematical journey.

They are intended for children ages 2 through 12, covering topics from basic counting to geometry and pre-algebra.

 

Praise from Parents & Teachers

 

“After a couple of weeks of playing games from Kitchen Table Math, Book 1, my four-year-old daughter woke up each morning asking ‘Can we play math at the breakfast table?’”

— Bob Ogle, father of two

 

“... [Kitchen Table Math] gives [kids] exposure and tastes of the ideas in concrete, fun ways so that when they are 9, 10 and 11 they can master it like an old friend they’ve seen before, vs. seeing it for the first time. ...

I also like the way he inserts math words to learn and defines them in real math words, for example, he defines rational numbers in its technical glory: the set of numbers that are fractions, where the fractions are any integer divided by any non-zero integer. Then after giving examples he says, “It is not very important that your child learn the term ‘rational numbers’ at this stage. If you use it occasionally now, your child will simply grow up with it and it will be one less thing to learn later.”

This is what *I* do without thinking about it. He’s right, they won't even realize they are learning it if it is inserted on a regular basis.”

— Julie Brennan, tutor and home-school mother

 

“As a lifelong lover of numbers and a teacher of math for 35 years, I find Chris Wright’s Kitchen Table Math to be extraordinarily helpful in helping young children learn numerical concepts and enjoy math.

The book is well organized, starting with beginning counting and continuing through the basic arithmetic operations to some geometry and probability. All ideas are clearly explained and readily accessible to adults and children. One of my favorite parts of the book is the number of fun and engaging activities. When I was young, my family had a “game night” at dinner one evening a week. When it was my or my father’s turn to choose, we always chose math games. How I would have loved to have had some of Chris’ suggestions to use back then or when my own children were growing up. I have bought copies of this book for my several grandchildren, a great niece and great nephew and for the daughter of a young friend of mine.

I highly recommend Kitchen Table Math as a way to help children love working with numbers and recognize that math is a fun and natural part of the world.”

— Molly J. Robinson, retired teacher

 

“Some of my finest childhood memories are of when my mother rewarded me for good behavior by taking me to our upstairs closet to do a math workbook together. The books had mathematical activities, puzzles, and games, and developed an enjoyment and thirst for mathematical challenges that has persevered to this day. Dr. Wright’s Kitchen Table Math Book 1 is probably the best book around today with such uses.”

— James Choi, Director of Mathematics of Sabio Academy

 

Amazon.com review for Book 2:

“As a high school English teacher, I feel comfortable helping my two daughters with their Language Arts homework, but as they move into 4th and 5th grade level math, I feel a bit unprepared to tackle some bigger math problems. I can’t tell you how many times since the beginning of the school year, I’ve picked up Dr. Wright’s book and used it to help my daughters in their understanding of place value, long division, fractions, and powers and exponents. Without this book literally sitting on my “Kitchen Table,” I would not have had the correct tools to assist them in their math work. I like how he lays out the steps very logically and sequentially, creating a visual for those students who are visual learners. My daughters feel better about themselves, because they are performing better on their math quizzes at school. This book is a MUST HAVE for all parents who are trying to help their kids develop good math skills.”

— Andrea Juskaitis, teacher and mother

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Meet Dr. Wright

Hello—I’m Chris Wright, author of the Dr. Wright’s Kitchen Table Math books. These books started about 30 years ago in the form of four pages of notes I wrote for my brother and his family. Over the years, those four pages have grown into three books and over 700 pages.