Go Figure!

Ooooh, y'all. We picked up the COOLEST math-related book called Go Figure!: A Totally Cool Book About Numbers
 last week at the library, and I think this one's going to end up in our home library (another copy of it, I mean. I'm not stealing from the public library. Yet.) 

Check it out! This is actually a book that one of my children -- protecting the innocent here -- has taken with him or her while answering nature's call. It's that engaging. This child later informed me with great enthusiasm that if I tried to write out a googolplex, I could fill the entire universe with atom-sized zeroes and still not be done. (Gosh, sounds sort of like laundry, doesn't it?) Big numbers are popular at our house, and this book gives us the names for numbers we never even knew we'd need. Like a vigintillion, which is 10 to the 63rd power. 

There's also plenty of cool stuff about prime numbers, infinity, Fibonacci numbers, etc. I don't think we've ever gotten this into a math book, but this one is A WINNER. 

And speaking of engaging books, I meant to note a few weeks ago that we found a good one on Amazon during our "study" of the Constitution. It's called We the Kids: The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. It's basically the preamble to the Constitution, but illustrated as a family campout (hard to explain, but it works). The beginning of the book contains a glossary that puts the phrases of the preamble into plain English. Ian was able to both memorize the preamble AND end up with a pretty idea of what James Madison was getting at, which really is the whole point, no?