Amazing Area Mazes: 70 Race-The-Clock Puzzles for Budding Math Wizards: 1 (Original Area Mazes)

This is a fun way to practice and improve math skills. I got this to use with the kids who need an extra challenge beyond what they are doing at school, but this would be great for a variety of people. If children are currently learning about area in school, this would be a great thing to add to reinforce their learning in a fun way. I think this would be great for teachers to use in the classroom as well. This would even be beneficial for people who learned about area many years ago (including adults). It gets the brain working and thinking in ways it doesn't always do. I like the layout of the book as well. It starts off with some explanations about how to solve the puzzles and gives you some practice puzzles. As the book progresses it gets more and more difficult ending in some pretty intense puzzles! It gives you the option to time how long it takes you to solve the puzzle. Being timed on things like this stresses me a bit and just looking at the puzzles quickly I know there is no way I would do it quickly enough to reach the "amazing" status, which would make me sad, so I may choose to ignore that part. However, I think that is a great addition as an extra challenge for anybody who may need it! At the end of the book you can find the solutions to all of the puzzles, including the steps needed to get to that solution. This is a very well done puzzle book and I would recommend it to others.

If you have a student who just loves math problems, or someone who is interested in carpentry or especially architecture, this is the perfect gift for them. These aren't just math problems, but they use skills that apply in the real world job profession, as well as train you how to use one resolution to solve the next problem. The problems in this book are practical in nature, mirroring reality where you may know one dimension and another value and need to calculate the other dimension, or know the dimensions of an adjacent room and the total length of a wall of one room, but need to figure out how much space a wall segment in between takes up. This teaches you how to build from one value to another to end up at a final result. It is based off of standard elementary school geometry, so it would be appropriate for as young as a fourth grader or even third grader who loves multiplication and division, but it can also be used for a middle school student as a good geometry refresher or even high school geometry. Because of the simplicity of skill needed to solve the problems, it can be done at a very young age. Meanwhile, the complexity of building off of one problem resolution to another, makes it great extra teaching for a much older student as well.

We have similar activities in our gifted program's math strand. So I like this book as a way to continue practicing both computational skills and problem solving. Each page has 1 puzzle and they're numbered - so you can work through them in sequence or skip around. The introductory pages provide strategies for solving the problems using the formula Area=Height x Width. The answer key shows the computations that can be used to figure out the missing numbers. I like that the intro explains that the process and thinking behind the answer is important - not just getting the correct answer. It helps if they are somewhat fluent in their multiplication facts to be successful at this. The only thing that stresses my very competitive students out is the timing feature. They all want to get it in the "amazing" time and that can lead to frustration. It's supposed to be challenging and fun. The timing reward is a fun feature - but I'd prefer they take more time and think about their thinking to begin with. Maybe the timing feature is better started a few puzzles in rather than at puzzle #1.

This keeps adult brain busy and gives children good practice for math solutions

I like math, and I like puzzles. I'm rusty, but I still like a challenge. And these puzzles are challenging! I had to read the instructions twice to understand how to solve these. They reference solving for "A," "B," "C," and so on... but the mazes/sides are not labeled as such. Once I understood the method, it was easier. The puzzles progress from easy to hard. The ones toward the end of the book look quite intimidating. This is aimed at ages 8-10. It depends on your child, of course, but I think age 10 would be more appropriate, especially for the harder puzzles. Overall, it's a nice brain workout, and a good supplement to learning.