Inside My Brain: How I Turn Ideas Into Math Activities

 Hey friends. 🎨

Have you ever heard of aphantasia? It’s this phenomenon where some people can’t visualize images in their minds. If you ask them to picture a red apple, they don’t see anything at all. On the other side of the scale are people who can imagine the apple in perfect detail, down to the shine and the stem.

I think I fall somewhere in between. When I picture a red apple (#4 in the image above), I see it for a second like a flash and then it fades. My imagination is vivid but slippery. That’s how my brain works when I create. I can “see” my activities, but only for a moment, so I have to grab a pen before the image disappears.

Seeing Ideas Before They Exist

Most of my ideas start as a half-formed picture. I’ll open my notebook and start sketching boxes: “Problem 1 goes here, Problem 2 goes here.” I don’t even know what the problems are yet, but I know where they should live on the page. Sometimes the layout comes before the content.

Take my planet transformations activity, for example. This is what it looked like in my notebook when I first pictured it:

I could see the planets floating across the page, each one changing shape as the equations transformed. You can even see my notes like:

“If it reflects across the x-axis, give it a moon.”
“If it stretches vertically, add rings.”
“If it moves left, shift moons left.”

At that point, I had no clue what the exact problems were going to be, but I could already feel how it needed to look. Once I got that on paper, I built it in Canva, added the actual equations, and it turned into the finished product you can now find in my store.

Buy This Activity on TPT →

Then there are the sketches that haven’t become real yet, like this Always, Sometimes, Never activity:

When I first wrote it, I had no idea what the statements or the riddle would be. I literally wrote “blah blah blah” for the riddle section. But the concept was there: a self-checking riddle that forces students to think about whether something is always, sometimes, or never true. I can see it clearly now, even though the math part hasn’t caught up yet.

That’s usually how it works. The visuals come first, and the content grows around them.

When Ideas Visit in Dreams

Sometimes my ideas even show up in dreams. Once, I dreamed I was working on a worksheet for hours. I didn’t know what it was about, but when I woke up, I just knew: it’s going to be underwater-themed.

That dream turned into a project I’m still developing — an I Spy–style math activity. The concept came from a conversation with my husband, who can never find anything in the pantry. I told him he must have skipped playing I Spy as a kid, and that’s when it clicked: what if math could feel like I Spy?

Students could “find” objects every time they solve a problem correctly. I’m still in the mockup stage for that one, using ChatGPT to help me visualize and organize ideas (see How I Use ChatGPT for Brainstorming Without Losing My Voice to learn more about that process). 

The Math Literacy Series

Another side of my creative process is my “Math Literacy” work, articles that connect algebra to real life. Back when I taught, we used Newsela to teach reading across subjects. It worked great for science and history, but the math articles were always either too young or too light on actual math.

So I started writing my own. Each article blends a little bit of storytelling with algebraic reasoning. So far, I’ve written about:

• Literal Equations - why they matter, how to manipulate formulas, and where they show up in everyday life.

• Shrinkflation - studying proportional relationships and regression through real-world price and product data.

• Patterns That Grow - exploring arithmetic and geometric sequences, and how they connect to natural and financial growth.

Each article ends with about ten questions: five about comprehension and five applying the math. It’s my way of turning reading into reasoning.

How My Brain Really Works

My creative process isn’t linear. It’s flashes, fragments, and pages full of doodles that slowly become real. Sometimes I dream a theme, sometimes I sketch a layout first, and sometimes I write the story that will tie it together later.

The visuals give me the structure. The math gives it meaning.

That’s what I love most about designing, where imagination meets logic.

💬 Let’s Reflect

How do you come up with your best ideas? Are you a “see it first” kind of thinker, or do you start with the words and fill in the visuals later?

Stay curious, dolphins. 🐬

Daniela

🧩 Related Resources

If you love creative, visual ways to teach math, here are a few of my favorite design-forward activities:

⭐ Effects of Change Quadratic Functions Planets | Vertex Form Transformations
⭐ Solving Literal Equations Spatial Maze | Space-Themed Manipulating Formulas
⭐ Function Personality Quiz & Assignment | Graphing Functions and Math Writing

Thanks for reading! You can find all my math resources on 
👉 Teachers Pay Teachers | Math with Mrs. DOT
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