Carol Vorderman Books

This is a great math tool that I have sitting on my shelf and it has helped my kids do wonderful in math. I would additionally like to share this site http://thecyberprofessor.com/ which gave me the insight into know mathematical sciences as well.

This is simply the best math "activity" book out there! Well worth every dollar! Kids need help with many activities, but it is well worth the parent's time. The activities are not only educational but really FUN and engaging.

As a writer of educational materials, I have dozens of books like this on my reference shelf. Each has a different advantage, but HOW MATH WORKS is the best overall. It is full of fascinating information, easy-to-do experiments (yes, experiments!), and the clearest explanations of complex concepts I have seen. The full color layout is clean and appealing. The organizational features mentioned in other reviews are excellent. Highly recommended for teachers, parents, and others who work with students in grades 3-5.

Eyewitness - How Mathematics Works Carol Vordeman

Aspects of subject included Number and Algebra. Shape, Space and Measure. Handling Data. Using and Applying Mathematics.

Structure and organisation of the text The text is organised into categories, i.e. number. Each double page spread has a Title, a main paragraph, and lots of related but independent sections. Most pages feature a piece of maths history or an interesting unusual application of maths. The Pictures and diagrams all add lots of information, and are not just decorative. Activities

Ways in which information is presented Text in different sizes. Key points bulleted. Photographs and diagrams. Step by Step instructions using both words and pictures. Separate sections are framed. Background for the same section (i.e. Discovery) is the same colour on different pages.

Helpful features Contents, glossary index and heading. Activities and problems. Categories and sections mean that the information can be dipped into. Emphasis on the place of maths within society. Lots of concrete maths.

Potential difficulties Lots of information to take in. Activities require a lot of equipment. Lots of mathematical vocabulary

Reading skills required Use of contents index and glossary. Heading, subheading. Reasonably difficult general vocabulary. Being able to skim the page and select relevant or interesting information. Lot's of mathematical vocabulary to take in.

Implications for teaching

Ideas for lessons. Introduction / reference for teaching. General background reading. Display. Extension work / reinforcement ideas.

This colorful, fun book is a far-ranging, nicely-illustrated exploration of the world of mathematics. It has sections on algebra, probability, statistics, calculation, geometry, topology, and more. Each pair of facing pages discusses a mathematical concept and its history. Most pages offer an amusing puzzle in which the concept plays a role along with a thing you can make or do that involves the concept (how to make a set of ``Napier's bones'' to help in multiplication, how a topologist can take his vest off without removing the jacket worn over it, a card-file/knitting needle database machine). A child who spends time with this book will learn to see math for the fun game it is.

This has got to be the best diet on earth. The recipes are simple and all dietary aspects and restrictions are explained well. I lost 14 pounds in a relatively easy few weeks. I have recommended this to every woman I know who wants to drop a dress size or two. As a benefit (or maybe this should be the main purpose) I felt healthy for the first time in years. If you buy only one diet book ever, make it this one.

The activities in this book adhere to the National Research Council's "National Science Education Standards and introduces science in a way elementary children can understand.

Learn Science uses an inquiry-based approach and each page of questions includes an answer key and detailed explanations. The answer section has notes for teachers, tutors or parents. A progress chart at the start along with a page of stars helps to keep kids motivated. There is also a certificate at the back of the book that can be placed on the refrigerator or bulletin board.

The fun activities include:

Name that Leaf
Food Chains and Webs
Magnet Magic
The Light of the Moon
Metals Shine
Sparkle and Shine

Children learn to identify the phases of the moon. They learn where animals live, the difference between good and bad microbes, how to maintain healthy teeth and how to identify musical sounds. A visit to a music store would be a fun activity before the pages on music.

Learn Science Grades 3-4 provides a good introduction to the basics of Animal eating habits, Minerals, Force, Friction and Light.

~The Rebecca Review

The activities in this book adhere to the National Research Council's "National Science Education Standards" and introduces science in a way elementary children can understand.

Learn Science uses an inquiry-based approach and each page of questions includes an answer key and detailed explanations. The answer section has notes for teachers, tutors or parents. A progress chart at the start along with a page of stars helps to keep kids motivated. There is also a certificate at the back of the book that can be placed on the refrigerator or bulletin board.

The fun activities include:

Water Science
Separating Mixtures
Dinner at Sea
Temperature and Solubility
Flower Pollination
Name that Metal

Placing a bottle over a burning candle shows why oxygen is needed for something to burn. A section on microbes show how germs could travel to food and make you sick. The section called: "Drugs and You" shows why alcohol and cigarettes are not good for you. An emphasis on keeping healthy in more detail is introduced in this workbook.

Children learn about parachutes, why friction is a force and how water evaporates. Learn Science Grades 5-6 provides a good introduction to the basics of Solids, Liquids and Gases. They also learn about germination, insulation and how matter changes form.

~The Rebecca Review

I had the privilege of using this book as a guideline for teaching a group of "home school" youngsters from 1st-9th grade. Science can be a scary subject to those of us who remember the mean and fierce physics/chemistry/biology teacher. Mr. Parker makes science enjoyable and exciting creating a feeling of glad anticipation for the next lesson. The experiments are easy and help the children visually see the workings of this majestic creation called the human body. My students specifically enjoyed the experiment having to do with how the inner ear works. Please do yourself and your kids a favor by buying this book. You will learn to love science for the first time in your life.

I had never done a sudoku puzzle so I bought this book and loved it. So much so that I'm now online to get my next Vorderman Sudoku book.

Her method takes you through 4 levels of difficulty explaining techniques for solving at each level and diagramming solutions as they are worked out.

She also has scores for the puzzles which adds a little spice. For example, if your time is less than X minutes you get Y points, etc. The harder the puzzles the longer you have to solve them, but the times are often pretty challenging.

Interestingly, I found that I trusted Carol to provide solvable puzzles. Some of the books I've picked up have puzzles that don't seem to be solvable - one of them even had wrong anwers in the back, i.e. the grid in the answers didn't match the grid given for the puzzle.

I recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn how to solve Sudoku puzzles.

I WAS HOPING THAT SHE WOULD HAVE GONE INTO THE SOLVING OF MORE DIFFICULT PUZZLES. HOWEVER, I THINK SHE DID A GOOD JOB IN SOLVING THE MEDIUM PUZZLE SOLUTIONS.

*****
This is a great sudoku book for all levels, but especially good for those who wish to increase their sudoku proficiency and MASTER sudoku. There are 200 puzzles, only one to a page, printed large enough for marking up. There are places to record your time, too, and you can accrue points based on how quickly you can do a puzzle. This is nice, because although I prefer difficult puzzles now, it's fun to go back and do an easy one faster and faster. There are different techniques involved in the different levels of puzzles and timing them makes them all continue to be challenging.

If you're a beginner, you can start out with the easy puzzles and work your way up. There are medium puzzles, too, as well as difficult and super-difficult. There is plenty of technique instruction, and there are many examples, so this could serve as a first book for adults. It was not my first sudoku book, but it is still one of my favorites, and I find myself going back to it again and again.

Highly recommended.
*****

Good basics. A good springboard, and you can go to more advanced techniques later. Her favorite epressions are "slicing and dicing." Took a while for me to figure out that all she's telling you is to look horizontally, and vertically.

VERY HELPFUL. SHE DOESN'T LEAVE YOU WONDERING WHAT CAN I DO, OR TRY, OR WHERE TO START. IT'S ALL THERE FOR BEGINNER OR DIFFICULT PUZZLE SOLVER. THE ONLY BOOK OF IT'S KIND OUT THERE ...I.B.E. MASS.

If you're an absolute beginner to Sudoku this book might be a good start. There's a large quantity of puzzles progressing up through various difficulty levels, and some introductory Sudoku tips to get you started.

If you are not a beginner this book has little to offer. There are four grades of puzzles, but I can't imagine anyone of even modest skill wasting time on easy, medium, or "difficult" puzzles, all of which are the Sudoku equivalent of word searches (i.e., no logic involved). The "super difficult" puzzles are only moderately challenging at best, but there's no reason to carry around a book this large when you're only going to use 1/4 of it. The book attempts to add an additional challenge by including a time-based scoring system, but the time allotted is so ridiculously long, if you don't get the top score it's probably because you fell asleep.

On the plus side there are a couple of Sudoku variations like "Squiffy Sudoku," but there are only 20 total puzzles and there's no point in buying the entire book just for those.

If you're a beginner who wants a light diversion this might be a worthwhile book just because of the large number of puzzles included, but for everyone else there are better choices.

My dad loves Sudoku puzzles. I got this for him for Christmas last year, and he is almost done with the entire book. He does about a puzzle or 2 a day, and the book has a place right next to his recliner. It made an excellent stocking stuffer. Now I am off to get him another one by Carol Vorderman since he liked this one so much.

This is a great book for the sudoku addict to carry on vacation. Puzzles range from very laid-back to rather fiendish (including some jigsaw and giant). I recently survived a trip across the Atlantic by working on ever less demanding puzzles as my fatigue increased. I also used some of the really simple puzzles to answer "how on earth do those work?" during family visits. Even though I often work on super-difficult puzzles, this is not a boring book for me.

This book contains many puzzles with multiple skill levels. The author has other books and I find the puzzles very stimulating.

The book is good, not too expencive, a lot of puzzles for everybody... But what's with the times? I timed about half the puzzles I did and I scored the highest amount of points easely every time, and then the "Carol's time" that shows up every ten puzzles or so. I beat 'Carol' every time too and SHE has the title "Sudoku Expert". I'm sorry, but that just bugs me. If you're gonna give categories of what's good and what's not yet so good, make categories that will push people to be better.
Sudoku makers don't realise that there are people who aren't beginners anymore...
Besides that, the book's pretty okay

Heather Couper has scored a coup in writing this fun and exciting book to help you and your child be successful in school science. We used this book as a guide to a curriculum we wrote for a private school here in Washington. The students used to cheer when I came in the room with the lesson of the week which always came with an experiment from this book. Science was exciting and I never had any discipline problems. When you can properly engage a student and take away the fear of failure, you have won. This approach helped all the students but was especially impactful for the students with learning disabilities who struggled with the written word only approach. Get excited about science with your children! This book removes all fears.

This book teaches much information about the universe, from quasars to black holes. It has many, many experiments kids can use to learn about different planets and topics. Great book!

It was very hard to rate the books in this series, How the Universe included. In many ways, the book is excellent. The concepts and information are presented clearly and accurately, often in much more detail than usual in late elementary/early middle school. This series is produced by Dorling Kindersley, and though the organization is different (two-page spreads but with illustrated "experiments" and explanations rather that lots of picture-factoids), a flavor of the Eyewitness books remains.

HOWEVER, there are no experiments in this book. There are projects and demonstrations, but not one experiment. About 1/3rd to 1/4th of the activities are written as demonstrations that could be make into experiments with an adult's guidence so that a child is led to hypothesis and to test his hypothesis through experimentation, but as written, none of the activities can qualify. The remaining activities are either demonstrations that can't be easily turned into experiments or are simply projects, like making a telescope or a sundial. Some of the activities are also made ridiculously complicated and lengthy for the amount that a student would get out of it. For example, instead of sticking a sticker on a ball and turning the ball in the dark while illumated with a flashlight to show how day and night works, the child skewers a rubber ball to make an axis, uses two pieces of posterboard to place the axis at the exact right angle, paints the ball like the earth, puts a pin where he lives, and FINALLY, after several hours, uses a lamp to demonstrate something that without all the cutesy overhead would take less than a minute. Sure, you have a neat little globe as a result, but you just spent several lesson times on an activity that should have been a fraction of a lesson! The learning from the activity doesn't justify the time spent on it. Not every activity has this problem, but enough do that the overall effect is to lower the quality of the book.

Quite simply, this book would be a great resource for a flexible, knowledgable homeschool or institutional school teacher, but its educational usefulness exactly as it is written is limited by its flaws. On the basis of its flaws, I would give it a 2, but because of its great usefulness for the knowledgable user, I'd give it a 5. A 4 is a compromise.

The main topics in this book are:

Spaceship Earth
The Moon
The Solar System
The Sun
The Stars
The Cosmos

Another 300 puzzles from Carol Vorderman. This volume throws in some increasingly difficult 9x9 standard sudoku puzzles, together with several variations. As with her Massive Sudoku, you get 16x16 puzzles (using numbers, not letters) as well as the jigsaw sudoku variation she calls "Squiffy." The big add here are several of the variation known as "Killer Sudoku," which require some minor math to solve (as with the new Kakuro puzzles, clues are given as sums and you must deduce the number pattern from the sum provided, still following the other traditional Sudoku rules.)

Was that confusing? That, I suppose, is the value of the book - Vorderman provides solid instruction and very good solving tips for the new variations.

If you have read Carol Vorderman's first book, MASTER SUDOKU, then you will be familiar with how she teaches. This volume picks up where the last one left off. What do you do when a puzzle is too hard and slicing and dicing just isn't getting you anywhere? Well, you could try the lessons in this book.

These lessons take you to new levels of puzzles. Carol clearly shows techniques for solving the hardest of puzzles. She does so in a clear and easy to understand manner. Each lesson is then followed by sample puzzles for the reader to practice their new skills upon.

But the book does not stop there. There is more to sudoku than just hard 9X9 grids. There are tougher variations and Carol takes the reader through some of the more popular variants and shows how to apply her techniques to them as well. You get squiffy puzzles where the 3X3 sub-grids have been replaced by other shapes. Sudoku 16 where the 9X9 grid has been replaced by a 16X16 grid. And then there is my favorite, killer sudoku, where the clues are given in the form of relationships between the answers. 300 puzzles are included in this volume to make anyone a true sudoku master.

I purchased this book based on the author's reputation and was greatly disappointed. Almost one third of the puzzles in this book are defective and cannot be solved. Don't buy this book.

Carol Vorderman seems to be an excellent sudoku editor, in the sense that the puzzles she presents are usually interesting and fairly fit the stated category. Still, this book is on the easy edge of "extreme." It is an excellent book for someone reaching out to more difficult and tricky puzzles than the common "easy, medium, hard" categories. Those looking for puzzles requiring single-number solving and multiple worksheets should pass it by.

For everyone who cares about their brain health, this book is very good. Mental fitness is essential to sustaining an active, clear mind. Many people do not realize that working out your brain is just as beneficial as going to the gym. This book really highlights the importance of doing mental exercises.

I personally find it easier to do brain exercises online and I joined a service called [...], which provides fun brain exercises and interesting articles. And, my mental clarity and sharpness continues to get better each day. The key to longevity is mental fitness, and if you ask me - we all need to put our brain on the treadmill!