What We Do and Why

About a decade ago I had the chance to step back from my career in math education to start a family. From the time my young children were old enough to sit, I have been envious of language educators as children were surrounded by all the picture story books they may ever wish to read. The choices they have are endless, as are the lists of topics, styles, and authors to explore.

It made me wonder where the math books are, the genuinely interesting problems that make children wonder and explore and just be with math on their mind for a while.

The Make a Problem series is one of our first attempts at building an explorative mathematical experience for children. It is made with middle schoolers in mind, but we imagine it to be an enjoyable pastime for adults or younger children as well. The craft portions of our books are intended to give the child a sense of ownership towards the problems, as well as to provide them with the necessary physical tools to visualize and interact with the problem scenarios. The problems come with multiple questions that are designed to orient the child in the scenario and encourage the child to explore and ask their own questions.

We offer no solutions in our books to remove the temptation on adults to turn this opportunity for discovery and wonder into a lecture, with the belief that it’s always better for a child’s relationship to mathematics to engage deeply with the problem and build their own structure of understanding than to be told what to memorize, even if it takes them longer to arrive at the same answers.

We hope, of course, that this book would bring the love of math to more children and inspire them to take an interest in problem solving.  But beyond that, we hope to see more adults join us in the effort of bringing more captivating math problems to children.  We hope to see the day when children are surrounded by problems to try their hands on, just as they are surrounded by story books to read today.  If the idea appeals to you, please consider joining our discord community of authors, educators, and parents who want to bring more interesting math problem books to school aged children.  We can help you start building your own in-class or in-home math problem book library or write and publish your own math problem books.

Nora M. Tang

Revised April, 2024