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National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Partners with Nextoy, llc. Daily Interactive KenKen Puzzles Now Appearing on Illuminations Website

Pleasantville, NY (PRWEB) April 04, 2012

KenKen® Puzzle, the internationally popular math and logic puzzle, is proud to announce an agreement with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the world’s largest organization dedicated to math education. Four daily KenKen puzzles will now be featured on NCTM’s Illuminations website (http://illuminations.nctm.org/). Illuminations provides standards-based resources that improve the teaching and learning of mathematics for all students. KenKen is highlighted alongside other classroom-tested math games, puzzles, lessons, and activities on the Illuminations site.

“We call KenKen the puzzle that makes you smarter, but more than that, it makes math fun,” said Robert Fuhrer, president of the KenKen Puzzle Co. “KenKen was created for the classroom, so we couldn’t be happier that a wonderful organization like NCTM is helping to bring the puzzle into more U.S. classrooms than ever before.” KenKen—the name based on the Japanese word ken, meaning “wisdom”—was developed in 2004 by acclaimed Japanese math educator Tetsuya Miyamoto. His goal was to create a puzzle to improve his students’ math and logic skills. Miyamoto wanted to encourage independent thinking, emphasizing trial and error, concentration, and perseverance.

The result: A grid puzzle reminiscent at first glance of Sudoku, but actually requiring basic mathematic calculations. KenKen soon spawned a wildly popular series of books in Japan. In 2008, Nextoy LLC brought KenKen to the United States. It quickly became the first daily feature since the crossword puzzle to appear in the New York Times. In addition to now appearing in more than 100 prominent U.S. publications (from Scholastic classroom magazines to the AARP Bulletin), KenKen can also be found in books for players of every skill level, mobile versions for iPad and iPhone, and the popular website kenken.com. And KenKen has never strayed from its educational roots, with the U.S. company launching the KenKen Classroom Program. This weekly service provides free puzzles to teachers across the country. This mission continues with KenKen’s exciting new partnership with NCTM and Illuminations.

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by Kevin H.

Problem solving is an important way of learning new skills as well as coping up with the real life situations. Research has proved that those who are good at problem solving and troubleshooting are very successful in every walk.  Therefore, this important life skill should be introduced at an early age by allowing young children to solve puzzles.  Solving puzzles can help build the fine motor skills and improve the coordination between the hand and eye movements. There are different puzzles available in the market for enhancing the math skills and language skills at the age appropriate level. They are a great way to improve the memory and are great brain stimulating exercises.

Children use their natural movements and instincts to solve the difficult puzzles. This helps unlock the mental faculties of young children. The research suggests that the more than 50 % of brain is developed during the first 5 years of the age. Therefore, children less than 5 years of age can develop reasoning, critical thinking and persistence by practicing puzzles. Patience and perseverance are the key virtues that can be developed through the difficult puzzles.

When we talk about word puzzles or word games, the first name that comes to our mind is crossword puzzles, where not only the children will learn new words and spellings, but will shape language as well. Crossword puzzles help make great readers and creative writers. It is important for parents to teach the rules of the games to the young children and help them in solving the puzzles. Once the children get accustomed to word games and start loving them, they will be comfortable solving these puzzles on their own. If the focus is on problem solving, the difficulty level can be increased from easy to hard. You can buy crossword puzzles on simple topics such as parts of the body crossword.  If you are teaching body parts, it is easy to have young children solve parts of the body crossword.

Now, many websites like Holdthatword.com offer free crossword puzzle generators. Parents can take advantage of these online tools and create crossword puzzles not only for language arts, but for any subject such as science, history and geography. Even children themselves can create parts of the body crossword along with other crosswords. They are definitely wonderful tools to shape language in early years.

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