Creative Math Fun that Activates Achievement | ep 116

Reach out to Dave Cole on his website - https://davecolebooks.com/

T.D. Flenaugh interviewed Dave Cole, a math enthusiast since third grade, who shared his journey from loving math puzzles to a career in engineering and computer science. He emphasized the importance of making math fun and engaging for children. Cole discussed his summer math camp for elementary school kids. He also highlighted the series of math-themed mystery books that he authored for kids. Cole advised parents to incorporate math into everyday activities and to use puzzles and games to make learning enjoyable.

Here is a list of games shared in the episode:

- Supply and Demand Game (a tag-style outdoor game simulating food chains and resource management)
- Mobius Strip Activity (cutting and exploring properties of Mobius strips)
- Digital Clock Equation Game (making equations from the numbers on a digital clock)
- Sudoku Puzzles
- Equations (a strategy math game where you start with the solution and find ways to reach it)
- 24 (a card game where you use four numbers to make 24 with basic operations)
- Set (a pattern recognition card game)
- "Dave" Math Card Game (a custom game similar to War, using addition, subtraction, and multiplication based on card color)

Transcript

TD Flenaugh: 0:00

TD, math, it is sometimes a scary subject for people, very difficult to master. For others, we have an expert today. You want to stick around, because he's going to give us strategies, tips and some insights on to make sure, into making sure that your child is going to be math ready? Okay, so thank you so much for joining us today. Dave Cole, welcome to the falling for learning podcast.

Dave Cole: 0:30

Thank you. It's great to be here. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

TD Flenaugh: 0:35

We always ask our guest... What is that thing that made you fall in love with learning?

Unknown: 0:43

Probably

Dave Cole: 0:45

Probably my third grade teacher. I think I can go, think I can go back to there, and particularly when it came to math. I was always good in math, so I kind of thought as long as I was getting hundreds on the test, I did not really need to do the homework. She and my mother did not quite agree with that, with that thinking, so they convinced me that I needed to rethink that. But what my third grade teacher did is she started giving me more homework and harder homework, and a lot of what she gave me were math kind of puzzles, and I just fell in love with it. I didn't realize I was doing a lot more work than everybody else in the class, but I was doing something that I really liked, and I still to this day, do math puzzles and logic problems and things like that. It's just a way to kind of keep my brain moving all the time.

TD Flenaugh: 1:43

Wonderful. Okay, so how did those skills and strategies that you learned from that original spark from your love of learning, how did it influence what you do today?

Dave Cole: 1:57

Everything I've done in my career has been kind of math related since then. So I went to school. I got a mechanical engineering degree, a math degree, a computer science degree. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do, so I was kind of covering my bases there. And everything I've done in my career on the computer side, on the engineering side, there's always been some math component that is in there, and it's why it's never really been a job for me, because you're solving problems, and to me, it's really no different than the puzzles I was solving when, when I was back in third grade. So you just keep solving problems. They're a little bit harder than than they were before, but that's what's kind of kept me going,

TD Flenaugh: 2:40

wow. Okay, and so tell us about your educational journey. Yeah, so your colleges that you went to and all of that.

Dave Cole: 2:53

So I started down at a smaller school down in southern Missouri called Southeast Missouri State, ended up graduating from the University of Missouri in Columbia and again, with mechanical engineering degree. I figured somewhere around my senior year that that was maybe not what I wanted to do. But here I am, I'm, I'm, you know, nine semesters and eight semesters in, it's like, okay, so I graduated with mechanical engineering, got a job as a mechanical engineer, immediately went back and and started going to school and and I picked up my math and computer science degrees and kind of made that career shift about about five years in.

TD Flenaugh: 3:38

So that was, was that graduate school, or that was just another or was it another bachelor's

Dave Cole: 3:45

or another bachelor's? Yes, so I have many bachelors piled up on top of each other, and never did go the Master's route, but so I'm kind of not as deep, but I'm broad.

TD Flenaugh: 3:55

So that is so interesting. I know a lot of people, they go right for the graduate school, and what made you do the bachelor's again instead of doing like a masters or something like that?

Dave Cole: 4:10

I think I was 22 years old, and I didn't think it all the way through, I probably should have, should have gone that route. It would not have been probably much more work. What I did instead was kind of pursue two bachelors at the same time. That kind of worked into my work schedule. Okay, so it ended up working out, working out fine as as a result,

TD Flenaugh: 4:32

that's a different path, and definitely might, might, you know, work for other people as well. So that's, that's, I like, that new perspective, a different perspective of how you did that. So now tell us about those you know what you do now that you're coming to really share with parents and educators out there as it relates to math.

Dave Cole: 4:57

Yeah, so I, I was working on. I was working at Facebook at the time, now called meta. I during the summer. I also ran this summer math camp for elementary school kids, and as as part of that math camp, I mean, it's cruel. It's summertime, and I'm making you go to math camp for a week. Actually, none of them wanted to be their parents wanted them to be there. Okay, so in fact, I asked the very first day. I said, How many of you want to be here? How many of you are here because your parents signed up? Only one kid admitted to being actually wanting to be there. So I said, Okay, so here's my job for this week, is I have to change your mind. So we played games. We did puzzles, we had competitions. Kids love competitions. And can

TD Flenaugh: 5:48

you stop for one second? Yeah, what kind of game? And I know that there are lots of parents and teachers that are suspicious of fun. So can you tell me what that kind of math game was? Because, like, be give us some specifics, because sometimes we are teaching kids things, or, you know, in but they're having fun, yeah,

Dave Cole: 6:08

yeah. And I'll tell you one of them, we did a, it was in essence, a supply and demand game to them. It was a TD game. So some of the students were assigned to be food. Some of them were assigned to be animals. Some of them were, you know, assigned to be predators. So the animals had to go after the food. The predators went after the animals. We had some people that went after animals or food, and you had to collect, you know, get enough food, and if you didn't get enough food, then you died. So after one round, there were less kids, and we played this. We probably played it four times.

TD Flenaugh: 6:49

So never said, you said this was like, tag. So this is like, we're up moving around and doing this.

Dave Cole: 6:56

Yeah, we actually did it out on out on the field. So they got to run around, and they actually had little flags, like flag football. So to to catch them, you would grab a flag. And if you were an animal, you had to get four food flags, otherwise you would die. And you had a certain amount of time, you had to have enough food, right? And we switched some rules around. Then we went back inside, and I said, so what happened when you die? Oh, well, there wasn't enough food. So that got us into supply and demand, and we could talk about supply and demand. If there's not enough enough supply and we have more demand than supply, there's problems with that. Or what happens if there's too much supply and not enough demand, and it allowed us to kind of talk about some math subjects. But they got it because of playing this game.

TD Flenaugh: 7:49

Love it. Yeah, so did you make this game up? Or someone showed you

Dave Cole: 7:53

we we made that game up. So I was doing the math camp at the time with my son, who was in high school, and I will give him credit for this one. I believe he actually came up with the with that game, and I helped him hone it a little bit. But yeah, so it was great. So it was a great way to talk about math concepts. We built bridges, like a lot of times you'll do in STEM we built bridges out of different things. And we talked about, why are triangles stronger than just a straight beam and things like that? But they were able to see it because we were putting weights on these, and some were crashing and some were not. So it was it was seeing them. It was visualizing. We did a lot of things with Mobius strips and strips of paper, and I would take a I would take a loop of paper. I just Mobis

TD Flenaugh: 8:45

strip, Mobius. Strips. Mobius. Okay, tell us more about So,

Dave Cole: 8:50

so we started with just a strip of paper, and so we're going to do some math with the strip of paper, and you fold it around so it makes a ring. Okay, so I've got this ring, and what happens if we cut this ring in half? Long ways? Well, you get two rings out of it. Say, Okay, so a mobius strip. I take that same strip of paper, but before I connect it together, I put one little twist in it, so now it becomes a mobius strip, which mathematically changes everything. So now you cut that in half the same way we did, but you don't get two rings. It just makes one bigger ring, and if I cut it in half again, it made an even bigger ring. So we just talked about, why, why was that? So we can get into some pretty high level stuff with elementary school. I've taught that same lesson at the high school level, and just the same little aha moment on their face when they're going, Whoa. And then someone will always ask, What happens if I make two twists in there? I said, let's do that. So then they were making two twists, and you cut that in half, and something different happened. Twist. It actually makes two rings, but they're connected together this time, and three twists, it does something different every time. It does something a little different. So now I had these kids begging me for paper and glue sticks and and scissors so they could they could do that. Now there's a lot of complex math behind why it all works, but that wasn't really the purpose. The purpose was to show math is more interesting than they think. It's not worksheets, it's not calculations, it is all around us.

TD Flenaugh: 10:38

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Tiffany Curry: 11:22

Taking advantage of when kids ask questions, yeah, you can just use that as a great learning opportunity. So for example, I was talking to a kid recently about how one of the kiddos in my child's care is on vacation, and they were asking me, oh, where is she, you know? And I'm like, Oh, she's in Washington, DC. And they're like, where's that, you know? So we have a whole conversation about the 50 states, yeah, that's the nation's capital, and what state we live in, and it's on the West Coast, and DC is on the east coast. And, you know, like I said, there's 50 states, and, yeah, we live in the city, you know, the city that we live in, and we live in the state that we live in, the cities in the state. And just, it could become a whole, you know, yeah, teaching moment. So again, if you're paying attention to the questions that your kids are asking, the things that they're interested in, you could teach them all kinds of things, and you you'd be surprised that kids can really you know, as young as three four, there's so many concepts that they can really grasp and understand as long as you're explaining it to them on their level, you know, you're not using collegiate, yeah, verbiage, you know, if you're explaining it to them on, you know, using words that they're familiar with, they could totally grasp it. And I whipped out the 50 states puzzle, yeah. And, you know, it just engage in and teach them, you know, based on what they're interested in or curious about. You know, sometimes I would also, when my kids, my older kids, were younger, I would ask them what they wanted to learn about, yeah, and then we would kind of go from there, you know, let them lead the way. And you'll find that if it's something that they've told you that they wanted to learn about, when it's time to go over these things, they'll also be more engaged, you know, that kind of goes along with the whole paying attention thing, you know, when you have times where you are teaching your child use the things that you've heard them question you about and or something that maybe you guys were somewhere out and about and you came Across, I don't know, a map, for example, and maybe you saw your child looking at the map and being curious. And, yeah, you know, you guys could bring a map home and go over what, what's on the map, you know, things like that.

TD Flenaugh: 14:16

That's yeah, I that. And again, thinking about the opposite side of that, sometimes we're busy, we're not in a good mood, and kids are asking us questions, and we're like, I don't know, or like, that's That's enough questions, or whatever, but we have to think on the other side of it, like, Wait, they're interested in this, and I could teach them something from this. And like you said, you know, I've seen very young kids be really interested in planes, and then they have all kind of information about planes because it's interesting to them. They'll look at books. They could identify planes. They can, you know, and you're like, wow, like, but it's like they were interested in it. They asked questions about it. You got books about it. They wrote. Sometimes they'll have like, advanced vocabulary, like, just because it's what they're interested in. So, you know, then they will dive deep. Like most of us, if we're interested in something, we'll get really into the minutia about it, granular details about something, because we just like it for whatever reason, right? And that's what you're saying, like, for whatever reason you're interested in, you know, when someone's an artist, they're interested in art, like, why? That's just who they are. Someone else interested in mechanics or planes, someone else interested in flowers or plants or whatever it is, and, yeah, so.

Tiffany Curry: 15:40

And it's kind of nurturing those interests

TD Flenaugh: 15:48

that is so good that you were able to bring the fun with it, with the math, right? That we're up playing, you know, something that looks like, maybe resembled tag from maybe people passing by. And also kind of like a maker, kind of space that you created, where they're making things, they're trying things out, really fueling the inquiry for kids when it came to math. And so those are some real strategies that our parents and our educators can think about. And, you know, a lot of creativity, like, you know, you're saying your son, your high school son, helped create that game for you. So maybe your kids will create a game, or you could create a game. But really taking math outside of the books and paper and thinking about practical application is, is really some awesome ways to bring math to the forefront for children.

Dave Cole: 16:42

Yeah, and we do it. We do all kind. In fact, my kids are, you know, they're older now, my son has a law degree. Now my daughter's a doctor. But when we get in a car and there's a digital readout on the clock, we still do this to this day. Can you make an equation with those three numbers? So if it's like 321 that's an easy one, I can say three minus two is equal to one, or one plus two is equal to three. And sometimes we'll throw in factorials and all kinds of things. Sometimes there's not an equation. And then I'll say, what's the next time where there is a good equation? So now that's much higher level thinking, and it's just using three numbers on a clock, and you can play that anywhere, and we still enjoy playing that.

TD Flenaugh: 17:29

That's really cool. Can you back up a little bit? I heard you say factorials, and just for our viewers and our listeners. Can you explain that for them?

Dave Cole: 17:39

Sure. So factorial, if I had a number like three factorial, and mathematically, you write that with a three and then an exclamation point after that, and three factorial means three times two times one. Five factorial would be five times four times three times two times one. And factorials can get very, very big, very, very quickly and to an elementary school kid, factorials are not a lot of use except for fun. But when you get to high school and you start looking at combinations, and how many combinations of of, let's say I have five flower pots I want to arrange them on a shelf. How many different ways can I do that? It's five factorial. So they'll they'll very quickly learn that. Wow, that's an easy way of solving some pretty complex problems.

TD Flenaugh: 18:32

Nice. Thank you so much. Alright, and so tell us what you're doing now to really, you know, support kids in math or educators in math.

Dave Cole: 18:47

Yeah, so, so from that camp, one of the things that I did, I told a lot of stories. I think I just like telling stories, and it's much easier getting a concept across if there's a story behind it, because you're not so focused on the math behind it, it's kind of the story. So one of the kids told me, Oh, Mr. Cole, you should, you should make these into books. And I said, Yeah, that would be fun. I'll do that. And I had some free time. I was living in California, kind of commuting back and forth to St Louis is, which is my hometown, and sometimes on weekends I had some free time, so I said, Okay, I'm going to start writing these. I'm going to write, take one of these stories, expand it out into a book. So I wrote a mystery story about elementary school kids solving mysteries using math, some math concept. So I was having fun doing it. So I wrote one, I wrote another one, I wrote another one. And one of my coworkers, I was talking to him about it, he said, You ought to try to get these published. And 1112, books later, yeah, translated into, I think, seven languages, nine languages, I don't know. Yeah. So. Would, I'm kind of an accidental author, and it was really just about telling stories.

TD Flenaugh: 20:06

Yes, some of what that reminded me a little bit of math in it that was on, I don't know if it's on PBS back in the day, I don't know. Like, yeah, mysteries being solved with math.

Dave Cole: 20:17

Yeah, there was a, there was a show called numbers that was on for a little bit, and it wasn't for kids, and it was, you know, they had the mathematician guy in there who was solving things going well, the math says that, you know, whatever. So that just kind of an intrigued me, and I'm sure that was kind of in the back of my mind when I wrote these, these books. But kids love them. I had one little girl write me this tonight, nicest note. She said, I really didn't like math. And during covid, I was at home, and my dad brought me the first math kids book, and I read it and liked it, and then he got me another one and another one. And she said, completely changed my mind about math. And she said, Now, math is my favorite subject, and it's my best subject. So she said, Thanks for giving me a chance to learn about math. And I went, great, you you got it that that's who I was writing this for you.

TD Flenaugh: 21:14

Absolutely. That is so great. And, you know, you know, shout out to, you know, parents like that. Could be such a great writing activity too, like just writing to the author and sharing how a piece of literature really helped you and you enjoyed it. So that's I really like that idea, too. So tell us where we could get your book.

Dave Cole: 21:37

So you can find out about on my other website, Dave Cole books.com very clever name. And it'll, it'll, you know, tell you all about the books. Got a younger series as well called Emily and Sam. I had some parents saying, because the math kids is probably third to sixth grade kind of range. And I had a couple parents, and this happened over a course of a couple weeks, I was getting the same message from multiple parents saying, my kids love your books, but I have some younger kids. Could you write a younger series? And I said, Well, maybe, let's see. So I wrote the first one. My publisher loved it. So there's three books in that series, probably some more to come on that as well. That's more for first to third kind of grade, early chapter books. Wow. So yeah, so sometimes you'll find them in local bookstores. They're hit and miss a little bit. You can always find them on Amazon, Barnes and Noble com, and all the big, all the big, big places, but a lot of independent bookstores as well.

TD Flenaugh: 22:40

Great. I know, like before the show, you were telling me at the beginning of this, this is the beginning of the school year, and that you have a lot of places that you visit. Can you tell us about, you know, how someone like what, how someone can get in contact with you, and then what would what you do when you go to their school?

Dave Cole: 22:58

Yeah, and also through the website. So gaveco books com, it's got a whole section on author visits. I've probably done, I don't know, 150 maybe visits Now, throughout Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, bit down to Florida. So it that, to me, is is fun, and they're very interactive presentations. So kids are doing some math with me, and we do some stuff with the paper strips. I do a little magic, which always keeps some keeps them interested. Sometimes some fire appears. I, you know, out of my hands, and you never, you never know what's going to happen. So it's a lot of fun, but I need to be very interactive so that the kids are experiencing that. And I do something a little bit different with younger kids than I do with the with the older kids. But yeah, you can contact me right through there. And, yeah, that's that's fine. I love, love doing the school visits. I had one, one teacher tell me when I was on a visit said, we have been reading your book, and we do it as a read aloud in class and in the book, I I do have some puzzles, because I think puzzles are a great way of teaching math without them knowing they're learning math, right? I don't even have to tell them it's math that they'll figure it out. And she said, whenever we get to a puzzle, then we all break into groups and we try to solve the puzzle, and like, groups of four. And I said, that's a perfect way of using the books,

TD Flenaugh: 24:32

wonderful tell us. Because I know, you know, I've talked a lot about this on the show, um, just how, you know, there's, like, a lot of kids and people are like, don't consider themselves to be mad people, or they don't like math. What might you what have you seen people doing that contributes to that, that maybe we could, you know, tell parents or educators like to be careful not to do that, or kind of reframe how they're. Are doing certain things so that we don't continue this, you know, where people can slow it down, at least the people i

Dave Cole: 25:09

i, in fact, I actually heard it on your podcast. I think you made a comment one time. We would never say, Oh yeah, I just can't read but, but we're okay saying we can't do math. So what I try to tell parents and what I try to tell kids? In fact, I'll tell you when I the very first thing I do at any school visit, as I always ask, how many of you like math? And in first grade, every hand will go up. Second grade, every hand will go up. Lose a few in third grade, but fourth and fifth grade. And I don't know if it's the event of decimals and fractions or what, but probably by the time I get to fifth grade, if I get 25% saying they like math, that's high. So that troubles me. That worries me a little bit. So then I do ask the follow up. I said, if you want to share with me, tell me why. Tell me why you don't like math. And I get two answers, variations of those. I'll get something like it makes my head explode, which means, okay, it's hard. Okay, I get it. Yeah, that's a variation of that. Or it's boring. And sometimes I'll get that same thing, same answer, two answers from the same kid. And math can be boring. So what I try to do is to show that there's math beyond what you're doing that is going to be more interesting. We'll talk about there's a famous sequence called the Fibonacci sequence, and it's not hard math. It is. You start with two ones. I love math patterns. Start with two ones, and I add the two ones together, I get a two. Then I add one and two together to get three. So it's just keep adding the last two numbers, and they pick up on the sequence really quick. I let them kind of discover the sequence, and then they're kind of shouting out numbers, and they get lost somewhere around 89 because the math gets a little harder to do in their head, but, but they get that. And I said, So why is this amazing? Have you ever seen the sequence before? And they always say, oh no. And I said, but you really have. And I said, if you go out and you look at flowers, every flower that's out there will have the number of petals will be a number in the Fibonacci sequence. So there are flowers with 144 petals, but there aren't any flowers with 100 petals or 82 petals, but they are some flowers that have 89 petals, and I have pictures of those, so I'll kind of show those. And then we talk about, I draw a picture the Fibonacci sequence. So you can actually draw little squares that kind of keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And if you connect them all together, it makes this really cool spiral, and they all recognize the spiral. And I said, So, where have you seen a shape like that? Think about animals, and they'll, you know, seashells and things like that. Then we'll talk about an elephant's trunk looks like that a pig's tail, so the shape is all around us. I said, so what if I'm collecting those shells on a beach and a big storm comes up, hurricane, hurricane, and I'll show them this Fibonacci spiral next door hurricane, they had the exact same shape and and spiral galaxies and things like that. And so it's amazing. I want them to see that that math is all around us, and you're going to keep seeing math, even if you don't like it, and, you know, it's out there. And the math is going to get more fun, you know. And that's what I that's what I really I, you know, if I can take anything away, I was asked at the end, is math more interesting than you, than you think? And most of them will, some begrudgingly, but will say, yeah, it's more interesting than we think. And if I can do that, then, then I think I've, you know, I've accomplished kind of a little mission that they made, give math another shot.

TD Flenaugh: 29:03

Yeah, that's, it's good, really, to think about it. And it's so it's, it is so limitless. And I've had several people come on, and they have a different take on how to do this. So you have, like, totally new ideas. But yeah, so there. So I think maybe it's on us as parents and educators to really make sure that we are highlighting and bringing to the forefront the ways in which math are all around us, how we could use it, the applications for it, how to make it fun, how to integrate it in ways that are more engaging, but and I think also embracing just that like it can be it can be boring sometimes, but there's all these other layers that make it more interesting. But when you're interested in it, then the boring is like. It's boring, right? Like, right, yeah,

Dave Cole: 30:03

and you're willing to go out and learn some on your own. Because ultimately, I think where we want kids to do is we want them to learn on their own, because at some point we're out of school, and we don't stop learning. We want to keep learning. We get to choose more what we what we learn, but we always want people to learn, so I want to help give the skills to be able to go out and do the learning. So what I did in the books is there's an appendix in each book, each of the math gets books that talks about the math. You don't have to get into the math, but if kids are interested, there's more details on you know, what does this really mean mathematically? And so I think that part's fun as well. There are also teacher study guides for all of the books as well, or at least most of the books they those usually trail the books by by a little bit. But nice.

TD Flenaugh: 31:01

That is so good. We so definitely in the show notes, we'll have all this information and for parents and educators to really be able to, you know, share these resources with their kids and really get into the books and the fun of math. Okay, and so you're so experienced, right, and with the math and everything. But if I'm a parent, could you give me some advice, or my fifth grader hates math, like, what should I be doing at home? Or what are some things I could be doing? You know that are really practical for me? You know, if I'm a parent who is not an educator.

Dave Cole: 31:43

Yeah, I, you know, for me, and I've done this with a lot of kids, and gotten them interested is, is in mathematical puzzles and and solving. You know, when I talk to when I talk to parents, and I'll talk to teachers, they're saying, Well, I know math is hard, I said, But math is how we kind of process things in our brain. So, so math is also science, and math is also even, you know how my my son, who's who's an attorney, he said, I am shocked how much I use math skills in my job as as a lawyer, just the logical thinking process. I need to prove this. How do I get this, this and this to do that? So, so those skills are really, really important. So, yep, maybe they will not do calculus when they when they get older, not everybody does right, but they are going to need these other skills, and a lot of those are just kind of thinking skills, logic problems. Kids like to learn how to do Sudoku puzzles and things like that. So, and there's all kinds of resources that are out there. You can Google, you know, math games for pick a grade and and there'll be lots of things or math puzzles for that. For that age, I coach 1234, like it's four now math teams, and we play a game called equations, which is just a really heavy duty thinking game, and the kids never will know how, how amazing math they they are doing. And I'll just tell you equations real quick, because it's it's an interesting game. We're taught to solve a problem. We are given three plus four to get seven right. Equations. Does everything backwards. You start with the solution, and maybe the solution is 24 Well, there are lots of ways to get to 24 there's two times 12 and there's two times 10 plus five minus one is and it makes kids look at numbers differently, okay? And it's a great strategy game, and I have fifth graders that are doing, you know, fractional roots and and powers and things, and they don't know how hard the math is that they're doing. They've just found strategies for doing that. Another game. I really two other games. I really, really like one game is called 24 okay? And it's a it's a card game, and it just has four numbers on it, and you have to find a way to make those four numbers using just addition, subtraction, multiplication, division to get to 24 using all four numbers. Okay, great, great, great game. Another one I like is a game called Set SCT, okay? And it's just patterns, and you have to find four things that are three things that are alike or different. And it really and you can play that with very young kids, and they, you will not be able to play with them long. They will get very good at it very quickly. But it's. Really good. Just a logical thinking game. I love that game, but you can make up your own flash cards. I think are, you know, no one likes flash cards but, but in math camp, I invented the game of Dave. It's my game. I could call it after me. So it's basically like playing the game of war. You divide the cards up. You flip over a card, and face cards are worth 10 points. Everything else on nine is nine and eight and so on. If they're the same color, they have to add them, and it's the first one to come up with the sum. If one's red and one's black, you subtract them. If they're both red, you multiply them. So there's three different operations that you can do. What are you really doing? You're doing flashcards. They love playing that game because it became a competition, and that's all they were really doing was was flashcards and working on their on their math facts. So it was fun. I really they would beg me to play that we'd come in in the morning. Could we play Dave? Could we play Dave? Sure, yeah, let's go for it. And that's something that you can do at home with your kids, right? If they're struggling with some stuff, you make it a game, and they don't have to know they're learning

TD Flenaugh: 36:14

absolutely we are so glad that you came on our show, another math expert on our show with, you know, a total different twist on how to make a math application fun, interesting, and even running around and and doing it, I love it, so we are going to make sure that all of that is in the show notes. And please reach out to Dave. Is there any final anything you want to tell parents or educators, maybe struggling out there with learning or just may or may not, whatever final things,

Dave Cole: 36:49

yeah, it's again, you find a way to get your kids to to want to learn. So if they love baseball and hate math, have them do statistics for baseball players. They don't know they're doing math. They're doing statistics for baseball players. You know, how many games behind are we? What's the magic number? All of those little baseball terms have math behind all of them. They could, they could get into that. So find something that they that they like, and find a way to incorporate some some math in there. Feel free to reach out. I have I can come up with ideas for you. So reach out to me through the website, and I just say, Hey, give me your situation. I'll come up with something.

TD Flenaugh: 37:34

Love it. Alright. Thank you so much again. Audience for you know, listening in or viewing the falling for learning podcast, please do something today that going to give your children the competitive advantage. Have a great week. Thank you. Thanks again for supporting the falling for learning podcast. New Episodes go live every Saturday at 5pm you can watch us on youtube.com, at falling for learning, or listen on all major podcast platforms such as Apple, Google, Audible, Spotify and much more. For more resources, visit falling in love with learning.com we really appreciate you. Have a wonderful week.