I'm excited that I re-discovered the "Math Playground" website this past week. Another teacher suggested that we use it with the students to review adding fractions. When I checked out the site I realized it was the same site I had used in the past to teach about functions when I taught at the high school level. I had never really explored it when I used it in the past; I had only just come across it from google searching "function machine" and I only used the function machine part of the website. Now I have noticed many great features of this website and how it has a great variety of topics, many which I will cover in my 7th and 8th grade math classes this year. I have enjoyed the interactive practice opportuntites that it gives and have incorporoated some of those into my classroom, but on my own I have also checked out the virtual manipulatives and math games that can also be accessed through this site. There are some really awesome ones on there! One that I espeically like is on prime factorization. It guides you through making a factor tree for two different numbers, then allows you to drag the numbers in to a venn diagram to find the greatest common factor and the least common multiple. Wish I would have discovered this BEFORE I had to teach about this!  I think this online manipulative is a powerful way to PRESENT and EXPLAIN the concepts and skills related to prime factorization, not just practice to them (and I think these types of online resources are sometimes hard to find for math)! I will hopefully remember this website next year when I it comes time to teach this concept!

Here is the link for the "Prime Factorization" online manipulatives that I think are especially good:


http://www.mathplayground.com/factortrees.html