I was cleaning up the Estimation Table at my last Family Math Night event when I noticed a slip of paper next to the Hershey’s jar. Taking a closer look at it, I realized I was looking at the thinking behind someone’s guess as to the number of Hersheys in the jar. This piece of paper is priceless to me as an educator. It allows me to clearly understand the steps this child took to arrive at his/her answer – an answer…
Back in the early 2000s, my husband and I joined forces, he as a software engineer and me as a teacher, to design a kids savings and money management software program. We called it KidsSave. In that program we included a fun way to teach kids basic money skills. It was such a powerful tool that we decided to include it for free on our kids and money website. One of my favorite features of the KidsSave Money Counter is…
If I had to pick one refrain that I hear from educators all over the country it’s How do we get families to come to our event? It’s obviously a common problem. One that I don’t have a definitive answer for. But I do have a few ideas that may help. Some of them are tried and true and a few I just discovered along the way. . Dinner + Math We all know that parents are busy people. Any…
I want you to imagine a world without math. What would that look like? Think about that for a moment. No math. How would you know what time it was? How would you know how much money you had? How would you bake a cake? How would you build a tree house? We learn math because it’s useful. It makes our lives easier. And it helps us understand the world we live in. Math is critical to the success of…well,…
Another fun Family Math Night Collaborative Project. Click the image to the left to get the lesson plan and to check out other great STEAM Projects. .