The Singapore Mathematics Calendar

Not Your Average Math Calendar!

Even if you’re not a tiger mum or dad, there is no better way to usher in the New Year, by blessing your child or a loved one with the quirky and colorful Singapore’s Maths Calendar 2025.

Literacy & Numeracy

Singapore’s locally published and printed “first of its kind” math calendar aims to kill two birds with a mathematical stone, by helping your little one become both literate and numerate in the shortest time.

With a new math question every day—the answer is the date on which the question is posed—offers a creative way for grades 1–2 (or primary 1–2) children to learn math, while having fun along the way.

Plus, the questions have been painstakingly set in such a way that they follow closely and timely the topics or concepts that are presented in the students’ MOE-approved textbooks and workbooks. Yes, even during the school holidays, calendar users’ daily mathematical diet is being taken care of.

Enrichment Math via Comics

With a monthly comic story that promotes biodiversity so that the younger generation would still have a planet to inhabit when they’ve their own children and grandchildren, Singapore Maths Calendar 2025 also aims to educate young readers about Singapore’s wildlife, while learning some fun facts about birds, mammals, reptiles, and sea creatures native to the island state.

Available at all major bookstores and local school bookshops

Publishing a Math Calendar

For aspiring mathepreneurs or seasoned math writers, who desire to produce a similar calendar for other grades or editions in 2026 and beyond, you might think twice or thrice before embarking on such a “deceptively easy” math project.

As I hinted earlier, as a writer, if you want to write a salable math title that would pay the bills (or one that might even help you retire prematurely), writing an assessment or supplementary math title has a higher chance of fulfilling your short- or medium-term goals than working on a [Singapore/Singaporean] math calendar.

At best, writing and publishing a math calendar might temporarily boost your ego, but based on my experience working on these tricky pet math projects, I’d recommend that you spend the man- or woman-hours producing a few no-frills assessment or problem-solving or recreational math titles instead—if you long for some decent royalty or pie-in-the-sky lump sum payment.

For the publisher, producing a math calendar, especially in ever-dwindling birth rate Singapore, the risks (and costs) are pretty high. For the writer, the much-longer time and oft-unappreciated effort needed to write a math calendar could be better spent teaching, tutoring, editing, or writing more salable or profitable assessment titles.

From a business standpoint, 98% of publishers would rather focus their energy and deploy their manpower on producing profitable titles than meeting the mathematical needs and wants (or satisfying the ego) of their calendar math writer. Moreover, from the editorial and production angles, churning out a math calendar could be frustratingly painful and technically challenging, compared to producing a typical assessment or supplementary title (or even an oft-ill-edited primary school textbook).

Count on Singapore! 

The Singapore Maths Calendar 2025 is not only a Christmaths gift for 6–8 year olds, especially those who’ve an ambivalent attitude towards the subject, but also an aha! souvenir for any traveler to the “fine” city of Singapore. An apt [nonboring] Singapore math gift to bless a loved one at home!

Be a part of the Singapore math diaspora, while having a good idea of the mathematical standard expected of most local students. The calendar’s must-do or must-practice math questions allows you to gauge your child’s level of mathematical proficiency vis-à-vis their counterparts in Singapore, where even their weaker students have so far fared better than the global average. 

For the price of two McDonald’s meals or less, with a yearlong supply of 365 routine and nonroutine math questions, plus 12 months of comics stories, there is probably no present Singapore math assessment title, enrichment or not, that offers the average or above-average student a wallet-friendly rich mathematical experience quite like the Singapore Maths Calendar 2025.

Trust not my words! See for yourself whether or not this math calendar-cum-assessment-book is worth a good educational investment for your child or homeschooler in 2025.

Bonus: A math problem a day could keep the tutor away!

Calendrically & mathematically yours

© Yan Kow Cheong, January 6, 2025.

Singapore Maths Calendar 2025 at Kinokuniya and Popular bookstores

A Grade 3 Singapore Math Question

Not too long ago, a mother posted the above grade three question on Facebook, and sought help from fellow parents: “Hi all, can anyone advise this P3 qn? Thanks!”

Before you read some of the replies or suggestions below, if you’re a parent or tutor, how would you solve this fraction question (with the mathematical knowledge of an average grade three student)?

A parent’s reply was: “This is a question that wants u to compare the fraction with half. Whichever fraction is smaller than half is the answer.

“To compare against half, take the denominator and divide by 2. If the numerator is less than the divided value, it is smaller than half.”

The mother replied, “蔡锦森 oh ic! Nv thought of that! Gosh, how to explain to a P3 ? 😝”

Another parent or tutor joined in: “So for such questions, there are 2 types. One type requires the student to compare against half. The other is to compare the difference with 1 whole. E.g. Which fraction is closest to 1? 7/8, 3/4, 6/7 etc”

Later, another member commented: “Normalize all the denominators and compare.”

Would you use any of the suggested strategies to solve the problem?

An Apt Question for Grade Three Students? 

In the Singapore math curriculum, the guidelines for elementary school students (or primary school pupils) learning fractions at different grades are as follows:

Primary 2 (Grade 2): Add and subtract like fractions whose sum is less than 1.

Primary 3 (Grade 3): Learn equivalent fractions; add and subtract related fractions whose sum is less than 1.

Primary 4 (Grade 4): Along with improper and mixed numbers; add and subtract related fractions whose sum exceeds 1.

As I’ve zero idea about the source of this test question, I leave it to the reader to decide for themselves whether or not this grade three question is in line with the local syllabus. If not, why? Or do you think this question is somewhat ill-posed?

What If?

Imagine if the same question were to be assigned to a group of grade five students. How would they approach it? 

Would most of them resort to a knee-jerk solution by finding the LCM of the four fractions, before comparing their numerators, rather than thinking whether a less-tedious or shorter method might do the job?

Or would they conveniently convert the fractions into decimals (with or without a calculator)?

The Art of Problem Posing

I wonder whether rephrasing the above question might make it mathematically (or fractionally?) more meaningful for students to apply their knowledge of comparing fractions. Say, what if we asked them to compare a set of fractions vis-à-vis a base fraction like 1/2?

Which of the following fractions is greater than 1/2?

A. 2/5     B. 3/7    C. 6/10     D. 4/9

Again, here too, the aim is to discourage students from religiously applying the fraction-decimal conversion, or from tediously converting these fractions to a common denominator.

At higher grades, we’d use larger fractions that would make finding equivalent fractions painfully tedious or time-consuming.

Meanwhile, may I encourage you to share how you’d tackle this fraction question without adding more pressure on students (who might already be suffering from some form of “fraction trauma” as a result of being subject to premature abstraction and procedural methods)?

Methodically & meaningfully yours.

© Yan Kow Cheong, June 29, 2023.

Is a Pythagorean Ban or Bill in the Pipeline?

Is the above geometry question a “trick” question to check whether the “anti-woke” curriculum censors in some red states are awake or not?

Or just pro-Disney critics trying to poke fun at some pro-DeSantis “math specialists” (or ultra-MAGA patriots and puritan parents), who’re hell-bent to ban any deemed questionable or objectionable math questions that could potentially add unnecessary stress to math-anxious students and their parents?

If a poem promoting national or racial unity could “cause confusion and indoctrinate students,” a nonroutine math question from an alien or foreign source might also inflict twice as much psychological harm to the self-esteem (or mental health) of students who’re not born or blessed with the “mathematical gene.”

In the name of mathematical wokeism, what would qualify as a “worst [math] question”? One that could lead to a temporary mental blackout or a three-second-long stroke?

Or one that would trigger common symptoms like faster heartbeat, sweaty palms, and dry throat, which unspokenly affect all of us to a certain degree, when faced with a time-based brain-unfriendly or fiendish math question?

Should polarized politics or racial puritanism be allowed to triumph over mathematical problem solving and critical thinking? When “holy votes” from a significant proportion of the population dictate the direction of math education, curricular or educational decisions that would benefit the nation would be rarer than perfect numbers.

Questionably & critically yours

© Yan Kow Cheong, June 4, 2023.