Ask HN: Good math books / activities for children?

Many problems can be formulated in just a few words. You apparently have some mathematical culture yourself, so just give him a handful interesting problems, at the edge of his intellectual reach, and let him wonder for some time.

When he was a child, Gauss discovered by himself the formula for the sum of integers from 1 to n, because his teacher asked him about it for n=100.

Pound o dice: you can buy a pound (weight) of dice with diiferent numbers of sides from amazon and ebay etc. these are usually Chessex (a quality brand). They are bright and shiny and fun. Don't eat them. You can work out your own dice games and problems. Button men is a simple quick game to play http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button_Men

Use estimation in everysay life - how many bricks in that wall, how many leaves on that tree, how many cookies in the packet?

Rules and tape measures are fun and lead to simple arithmetic. How many cm taller is A than B?

Math teaching techniques might be different now than when you were taught. Heres a good book http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0224086359

There are plenty of fun games you can introduce, one of my favorites is graph-paper racing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetrack_(game) Also Monopoly or any money-based game where you can learn to make change. Set and Quirkle are good logic-based games. I'm experimenting with some tabletop gaming with my 7yo, starting with Battletech quick-start rules. It's a hit so far. Not very challenging math-wise, but a lot more fun than Monopoly. :)

Learning how to use an abacus was something the kids enjoyed and helped with ways of thinking about numbers quite a bit.

You may find researching what home schoolers are doing for math programs helpful.

http://miquonmath.com/

have a playful spirit of exploration and go well with the Cuisennaire rods already recommended by DanBC, a recommendation I heartily agree with. My children all began their initial math instruction with the Miquon Math materials, and my oldest son, grown up and working as a hacker, definitely benefited from playing around with mathematics a lot as he grew up.

I suggest searching the Davidson Gifted Forum http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ for posts about math resources and posting there.

    How about Khan Academy?
    How about Common core?