Thirty-seven third graders and thirty-two first graders engaged in solving a tangram puzzle in the shape of a fox. They had five minutes to solve the puzzle, and after this time, they received guidance on the particular piece they had difficulties with. Through the lenses of navigating flexible abstraction, reinterpretation, combinations, and…

Having students solve shape puzzles, such as with pattern blocks or tangrams, is a popular way to encourage students to compose shapes in different ways and talk about the effects of different compositions (Clements et al., 2004; Clements & Sarama, 2009; Sales, 1994), meeting Common Core geometry standards in kindergarten through second grade…

The issue of early algebraic thinking is of great importance for the school life of young students. In this paper, the Father Woodland, a puzzle-like environment, is presented aiming to facilitate the use of algebraic thinking in early schooling. Seventy grade 3 students participated and their work was examined within Radford's (2011, 2014)…

Sudoku is an intelligence game that has fascinated many people. In addition to offering entertainment, it also attracts players to solve more challenging Sudoku questions. Sudoku novices tend to fail to focus on understanding the operation rules because the grid, words, and numbers of Sudoku are too complicated. The main purpose of this study is…

The Invisible Wall Project analyzes problem-solving processes of children in Grades 3 and 4 and Grades 8 and 9. The central idea of the research is to use sets of tasks that are all unsolvable, which means they have a goal that cannot be reached. The unsolvability, however, is of a kind that can be understood even by younger children. In our case,…