What Will You Do for Family Math Night?

After previously being at a PTA meeting, one of our parents voiced her opinion that many times students brought home homework with which parents weren’t able to help them because they were unfamiliar with the content.  Since  our parents have been in school themselves, many math strategies and methods are available to teach students–to mention a few–ten frames, ladder division, open number lines, compensation, bring it down addition, window method for multiplication.  Because of this we set up five stations for our parents in addition to the stations for our students. We really wanted to reach our parents because isn’t that what Family Math Night is all about?

We had six parent stations to teach parents what their children were learning at school–ten frames, addition strategies, subtraction strategies, multiplication strategies, division strategies, and technology.  The technology station gained much traffic due to its popularity.  We had a lap top d and an Ipad displaying websites and apps that parents could use at home to teach their children.  Many times when parents are sitting with their children in any waiting room, they hand their children cell phones to occupy them.  To capitalize on this, why not show them educational ways to occupy their children’s time?

For our students teachers developed all types of math stations.  We had three K-2 tables, three 3-5 stations, an estimation station, a technology station, and a music and math station.  The K-2 tables included dominoes and equations, ten frame games, and legos with number bonds.  The 3-5 tables included combinations with outfits, clock fractions, and measurement with paper airplanes.  Our technology booth for students was also a big success as students explored different math websites on laptops.

To encourage parent attendance, we served dinner, had door prizes, and announced  our 100th Day of School dress up winners.  We hope for even more attendance next year.  Pictured below are some of the stations and activities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The addition/subtraction tic-tac-toe boards and take home base ten blocks shown above are present at a parent table.  We have an over abundance of base ten blocks at school. We have about 10 LARGE plastic containers of them that are not used in addition to the ones in teachers’ classrooms.  Since we have so many, we decided to send some home with parents.