Last day to apply for anyone interested!

New blog post! On the value of manipulatives in some recent work with first graders. mathforlove.com/2026/01/mani...

The number 2026 depicted as a collection of 2026 circles, part of an ongoing series of artworks expressing the positive integers as a geometric arrangement of identical simple visual elements. #HappyNewYear2026 #HappyNewYear #mathart #unitchat #20262026 white circles

We need you! #ElemMathChat is growing on BlueSky and has trended multiple times this year. We’re looking for leaders to host chats from March to May. Interested? Add your name to the sheet below. Let me know if you have any questions! Thanks! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

The #PrinterSolstice prompt list is out! I like to try and participate every year. The prompts are mathematical in flavour this year so I feel like it’s a cue to make more mathematician portraits…. But you can interpret the prompts however you want. Join in! www.instagram.com/p/DSSTq8mgIu...

Here’s something fun I made in Tile Farm Studio while watching @isohedral.ca talk about spiral tilings during the #illustratingMath seminar this morning.

Hi #ElemMathChat and #MTBoS Friends! Tile Farm is offering a Spring 2026 Teacher Fellowship with free access to Tile Farm Academy and joyful, creative math PD. Learn more and apply here: tilefarm.com/news-events/... or contact @tilefarmer.bsky.social

#elemMathChat A5: I love the energy of classrooms and the excitement of a bunch of people in a room at the same time trying to all accomplish something. It energizes me then I feed it back to the students and it is a beautiful positive feedback loop!

#elemMathChat A4: I think in my own learning I realized I need to be actively doing things to understand things. In teaching I translate that to having as little “lecture” as possible unless it is an active discussion.

#elemMathChat A3: My favorite way to plan is usually while locomoting, either riding my bicycle or walking. I like doing it alone or with a partner but usually find a whole team doesn’t always give me enough space to explore.

#elemMathChat A2: I like my own qualitative data of how kids are doing. I never really work with large enough numbers of students that other quantitative data tells me much besides if somebody is engaged or disengaged.

#elemMathChat A1: I love doing Last Tile Standing on Tile Talk. One time I set some first graders up with it and they conducted a civil class for 90 minutes straight just playing and asking great questions with little intervention from me: tiletalk.tilefarm.com

A0 #elemMathChat I am Alex Romero, I am a teacher and co-founder of Tile Farm, the weather outside today is warm enough to go for a bike ride at night with a long sleeve shirt, but it can get pretty chilly some nights.

Note to self: I have to go to this

An old experiment with new coloring. An interlaced knot pattern with ribbon width that diminishes towards center. #MathArt

Tile Farm is offering a Spring 2026 Teacher Fellowship that provides professional learning focused on joyful, creative math instruction, along with free access to Tile Farm Academy. If you or educators you know might be interested, feel free to share the link below: tilefarm.com/news-events/...

I made a video about a pair of mathy shoes I designed in Tile Farm Studio (that you can now purchase in our new merch store): m.youtube.com/watch?v=UyUk... #iTeachMath #mathArt #fractions

A priority among local transportation agencies remains avoiding traffic jams rather than responding to concerns of pedestrians in the most danger, who are more likely to live in poor neighborhoods and wield less political influence #iTeachMath wapo.st/4polhCJ

How many tiles do you see? How many hexagons do you see? How many dots do you see? How many colors do you see? What other “how many” questions can you think of? Check my link in bio for free daily visual “how many” prompts like these in Tile Talk. #iTeachMath #MTBoS #mathsToday

When I think of the hat tile I think of this shirt. #hatTile #iTeachMath #tessellation #aperiodicTiling

I have two books by an author, Keh-Gong Shih, pub in 1996 that are just brilliant! But they are definitely lost. The first is PIctorial Mathematics: Patterns. It is fabulous! full of images like this. He created his own software called Mathgraf which is used to generate the images. #mathart #mtbos

Spent some time this evening relaxing playing in Tile Farm Studio and like this creation made out of 900 rhombi. Can you see factors of 900 in it? #tilefarm #mathart #rhombi

#ElemMathChat A6. I am always taking mental notes for next time and often pivoting mid-lesson because you never know what your kids know until they start talking! I usually do a mental run through right after a lesson planning for next time based on what I learned.

#ElemMathChat A5. I think some activities naturally increase the importance of listening and building on each others’ observations. Also sometimes regular bridge questions like “Does anybody have an answer different from Julian’s” can be helpful in setting a tone of listening to other students.

#ElemMathChat A4. I always try to vary group size for discussions from pair-share to tables to whole class depending on what is going on and at what point in a lesson. And give one on one time to students who have trouble opening up or pair them up with a good patient listener.

#ElemMathChat A3. I find most students are pretty happy to explain their reasoning, but one strategy if they aren’t is asking a slightly different question and how their answer would change.

#elemMathChat A2. As a Tile Farmer, I love making visual problems in Tile Farm Studio (or using ones in Tile Talk) and using those to get students to talk about math strategies. I think visual problems almost always lend to diverse strategies which makes for great conversations about math. Example:

#elemMathChat A1. I usually try to model by verbalizing my own mathematical thinking and that I make mistakes. Also I try to open with very low floor and often totally obvious things for students to talk about to open them up and give them confidence before moving to more complex things.

#elemMathChat A0 I am Alex Romero, from Albuquerque, NM but live in Los Angeles, CA. I am a teacher, artist, and co-founder of Tile Farm (math education app). Today I woke up super early and got to enjoy a beautiful morning with a nice cup of coffee, the rising sun, and fresh November air.

Happy “Key” day! Is it just a coincidence that today’s level 1 Crypto Tiles puzzle is both a word and a representation of today’s date (11/5/25)? When is the next time the date will form a real word? From tiletalk.tilefarm.com #iTeachMath #hexagon #cryptography #EduSky #mathEducation

Not only is this the level 1 Crypto Tiles puzzle on tiletalk.tilefarm.com but it’s also what you should go do today! Hint: the number of tiles in each cluster corresponds to a letter in the alphabet. #iTeachMath #cryptography

Join us for #ElemMathChat on Thu, Nov 6 at 8pm CST / 9pm EST / 6pm PST! Topic: Facilitating Meaningful Mathematical Discourse Leader: Latrenda Knighten @latrendak.bsky.social Share ways to get students talking and thinking deeply about math!

For those who were asking...

Symmetric Sweetness: #iTeachMath #Halloween #CandyCorn #Symmetry

Some spooky Crypto Tiles puzzles coming to you tomorrow at tiletalk.tilefarm.com #iTeachMath #cryptography

We have some fun Halloween themed patterns you can collect in Tile Farm Harvest this week. Here is one built in Tile Farm Studio by a 2nd grader from Albuquerque, NM. It’s a beautiful design, but also has a lot of underlying math in it. #TileFarm #iTeachMath #PixelArt #Halloween #Frankenstein

Blasphemous use of chemistry notation

Did any of my Canadian friends, fellow Angelenos, or baseball fans catch the World Series themed puzzles in CryptoTiles today? These are a part of a new free math talk resource we have called Tile Talk that you can find here: tiletalk.tilefarm.com #iTeachMath #cryptography

A6 #ElemMathChat I find when I let kids freely build in Tile Farm Studio they naturally just start asking questions about geometric vocabulary out of necessity to describe what they are doing/trying to do. I was teaching a class yesterday afternoon where so many words came up in a natural context.

A5 #ElemMathChat I think composing shapes out of smaller shapes, or counting shapes in complex composite shapes are great things to get kids flexing their knowledge. Here’s a fun little thing with a lot of geometry vocabulary to talk about that I just whipped up in Tile Farm Studio:

A4 #ElemMathChat While equilateral triangles are beautiful and elegant and common, I think it’s important to present triangles in as many shapes and forms as possible. I think it’s also important to present non-triangles when teaching what triangles are. And to count sides, even if it is obvious.

A3 #ElemMathChat To understand all squares are rectangles but not necessarily vice versa, I think it’s important to establish what a rectangle is and isn’t, and all the variations of what it can be, then land on how a square is just a special type of rectangle where all of the sides are equal.

A2 #ElemMathChat So much to squares! They describe special numbers, they are ubiquitously used in art, architecture, and design, they are the basis of how we measure so many things like houses or tire pressure, they have a dance named after them, and can even illustrate subtraction of fractions:

A1 #ElemMathChat I see geometry in the structure of letters and numbers. I see it in every single piece of furniture in the room I’m in. I see it in all of the art I make. I see it looking out at the horizon at all of the buildings in downtown Los Angeles. And of course in my shoes I designed :)

A0 #ElemMathChat Hello, excited to be here. I am a teacher, artist, and co-created of Tile Farm, a math education app with a heavy geometry slant. As a student, I hardly remember any geometry in school outside of 9th grade. Luckily I got a heavy dose of it at home from my geometry loving father.

One of the most fun aspects of last week at #NCTMATL25 was everybody’s enthusiasm for our sneakers designed in Tile Farm Studio. For all of you who signed up for our newsletter, we will be selecting a lucky winner this week to get their own pair! Who knew math could be so fun!?!? #mathmadebeautiful

Team Tile Farm just competed in the 4x400m relay at the math education Olympics. #NCTMATL25

My brother solving a CryptoTiles puzzle at #nctmatl25. Come by the Tile Farm booth in the exhibit hall tomorrow to try it out. It’s part of a fun new free resource we have called Tile Talk!

@tilefarmer.bsky.social it was so wonderful meeting you IRL! You are an amazing person!

My dad is doing some serious math on his complimentary NCSM post it notes he got at the conference. He went through the whole pack, here are some highlights: #NCSM2025 #NCTM2025 #iTeachMath