Sunday 24 April 2016

Hosting a Math Family Night

Are you looking for ways to increase home-school connections in Mathematics?  A fun way to engage families and friends is to host a family math night.

Successful planning includes assistance from staff members in a school community.  With permission from school administration, the official planning process involves choosing a location or locations within the school to host the event, create an invitation, select age and grade appropriate activities, provide some fun visuals to keep students talking about the event at home.

Locations may include classrooms or common areas such as a library and/or gymnasium.  Ensure that there is enough room to move around the stations or activities.  If weather permits, some events may take place outside.  An invitation should include the location and time.  A one and a half hour time period is recommended.  This will give parents and students an opportunity to visit at least 3 activities.

Activities should be selected based on age or grade.  For example, students at the age of 4 or 5 can go "fishing" for numbers.  Have a kiddie pool set up and magnetic fishing poles.  Attach magnets to numbers.  Place the numbers in the pool.  Have students roll a number cube (dice) or two number cubes to generate a sum.  The students then fish for the numbers.

Additional activities may be found at this fantastic website:  http://mathwire.com/games/games.html

For added incentive, add a punch card and have participants obtain a punch for each station visited. After their punch cards are full, they can collect a small prize.

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