family math – Early Math Counts

Another article about Early Math Counts (not the site – but actual Early Math Counts)

Early Math Counts — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 11:12:23 +0000

Thanks to my friend and colleague Carrie Nepstad for sending me this article from KQED.org. The title, How Adding Math to a Child’s Routine Can Advance Achievement, gives you a pretty good idea about the context, but it may even be one of those articles that you actually copy and give to parents because it describes the value of incorporating math strategies at home.

Where the wild integers are

The article focuses on a new IPad app called “Bedtime Math” which is designed for children and parents to work on together. The math is embedded into a story problem that needs to be solved. Parents and children can choose the problem of the day and work through the math. There are questions for wee ones, little kids, and bigger kids.

Check it out.

Project EQUALS

Early Math Counts — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 12:21:35 +0000

I was doing some research about new and exciting ways that educators are getting parents more involved in their children’s math education and I came across Project EQUALS from the University of California at Berkeley.

Project EQUALS provides workshops (not really helpful unless you live in the Bay Area) and curriculum materials for teachers, parents, family, and community members.

According to the website, the page for mathematics for young children and their families is called Family Math.

FAMILY MATH focuses entirely on families learning mathematics together. In FAMILY MATH, mathematics becomes a challenging and engaging learning experience for everyone. Its math topics connect to the school curriculum, including algebra, probability, statistics, estimation, logic, geometry, and measurement.

Check it out here.

Family Math

Early Math Counts — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 12:00:50 +0000

Growing up I lived in a house with 5 people. There was me, my mom, my dad, and my two sisters for a total of 5. We also always had a dog, so there were really 6 members of my family in the house. When my older sister left home, there were 4 of us left, with one dog.

No matter how you do it, young children love to talk about their families. Last week we looked at how you can encourage this conversation by putting pictures of the children’s families up on the wall. You can further explore this by looking at children’s homes. Of course, we should always be mindful of where the children come from. Some may not have a home, or may be staying with relatives. If this is the case with some of your children, I wouldn’t do this activity.

However, if all of the kids in your program live with their families in a house, or an apartment, or a farmhouse, or a condominium, then an exploration of who sleeps where can be an interesting math exploration.

Start with a simple question. “Who has their own bedroom?” or “Who shares a bedroom?” You might have a large piece of chart paper up with OWN on one side and SHARED on the other side. The children can come up and write their names under their situation. As a group, you can determine if more kids have their own bedrooms, or if more kids share bedrooms.

As a follow-up activity, the children can draw their bedrooms. If they choose, they can draw the people who sleep in their bedroom and number them.