Book Review: Super Fun Math Games for Kids

Most of us probably don’t think of math as being playful. It feels like a set of rules that need to be followed every time. But math can also be about exploration, experimentation, and drawing huge shapes on the driveway.

Taking a playful approach to teaching math concepts is the philosophy behind Super Fun Math Games for Kids by Rebecca Rapoport and J.A. Yoder. The 32 projects in this book will have kids ages 6-10 drawing, coloring, building and sewing, all the while learning about things like mobius strips, tanagrams, Koch snowflakes, Eulerian circuits and more.

And don’t worry if you don’t know what any of those things are. The book does a good job explaining enough about concepts to make them understandable without overwhelming young learners (or their parents who haven’t taken a math class in a decade or more).

The book covers geometry, topology, coloring maps like a mathematician, stitching curves, fractals, tanagrams, toothpick puzzles and graph theory. Each chapter opens with a “think about it” question that deals with a concept related to the chapter, and then includes a few “lab” activities, which are meant to be worked through in order within the chapter as the skills and concepts build on each other.

The idea is that kids can do the experiments with the help of an older child or adult, and some include variations for older people to play along with. The book is meant to be worked in, with activities you can color on directly in the book or pull out to use or make copies of for classroom use (materials are also available online for teacher and parent use).

The book includes a wide range of activities, from building with toothpicks and gumdrops to coloring maps without having the same color touch, drawing shapes without picking up your pencil, building puzzles out of tanagrams and solving a classic map puzzle to name a few.

Kids should enjoy these activities and learning about different math concepts in a fun way that doesn’t involve equations on the whiteboard. Adults playing along might just learn something, too!

About the book: 128 pages, paperback. Published 2025 by New Shoe Press. Suggested retail price $16.99.

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Gabon is a country in central Africa on the Equator, which is bordered by Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, as well as the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Guinea. Let’s learn more.

Gabon Facts

Gabon has an area of 100,000 square miles, or 270,000 square kilometers and is home to about 2.3 million people. The capital and largest city is Libreville. Almost 90 percent of the land of Gabon is forest, and the nation has huge biodiversity.

The original inhabitants of Gabon were Bambenga, and the Kingdom of Orungu was established there in the 1700s, and France colonized the area in the later 19th century. Gabon gained its independence in 1960.

The official language is French and about 95 percent of the population is part of the Bantu ethnic groups. The majority of people are Christian.

Gabon comes from the Portuguese word gabao, which means hooded cloak. Portuguese explorers in the 1470s used the term to refer to the Komo river estuary, which they said resembled a cloak. Eventually the name spread to cover the whole region.

Gabon is a presidential republic with a legislature, though there have been many disputed elections and, in 2023, a military coup.

Gabon National Symbols

The Gabon flag consists of three horizontal stripes, in green, yellow and blue. The flag was adopted in 1960.

The national anthem is “La Concorde,” and it was written and adopted in 1960 as well.

The coat of arms features a ship on a shield with the same colors as the flag, with three yellow circles in the green section. Above the crest is a large tree, and the crest is flanked by black panthers. The motto, which translated to English is “unity, work, justice,” is below the shield, among the roots of the tree. The slogan that translates to “we shall go forward together” hang around the tree.

I couldn’t find any official national animals or plants, but black panthers are considered a national symbol because of their use on the coat of arms.

Gabon Learning Activities

Did you know black panthers aren’t a distinct species? In Africa they are leopards, but in other areas black panthers are actually cheetahs, bobcats, lynx or other big cats. Learn more about the animals of Gabon at A to Z Animals.

Check out Monts de Cristal, or the Crystal Mountains, home to a large diversity of wildlife (including lots of butterflies) and a large national park. There’s lots of great pictures on that page.

Adventures in a Messy Life has a little Gabon unit study that includes links to some videos, a recipe for African beignets, and notebooking pages available for purchase that you can use for any country in Africa.

Check out this video with interesting facts about Gabon from The African Script.

Find more resources for teaching about Gabon at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Learn more about traditional foods in Gabon from Chef’s Pencil, and check out this recipe for what’s considered the national dish of Gabon, poulet Nyembwe, a chicken dish made with red palm oil (which is what the dish is named for).

Have you read?

Gabon Facts

Gabon National Symbols

Gabon Learning Activities

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