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Effective Family Engagement

Effective Family Engagement

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Dr. Karen Mapp, renowned for her work on family engagement, asked the audience at the 2024 ESEA Conference to list 5 events or activities that schools are currently doing to engage families. She then asked the audience to circle the activities that fit all three of the following criteria: “This is how you do effective family engagement”, she said. It turns out that our K-5 Family Math Night events hit each of the criteria she listed for providing effective family engagement: One…

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Promoting Your Family Math Night Event

Promoting Your Family Math Night Event

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Dinner + Math We all know that parents are busy people. Any opportunity to make their lives easier and, well, they’re usually in. So let’s take dinner off their plate (!) and feed them. A spaghetti feed works well. But if you want to make it easy, bring in pizza or, even better, have a local restaurant donate the food. You can pass out their restaurant coupons at the Family Math Night sending customers in their direction. It’s a win/win! If you do decide to offer…

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A Fun Parent Conference Giveaway

A Fun Parent Conference Giveaway

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In my August newsletter I mentioned that I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Karen Mapp, renowned for her work on family engagement, speak at this year’s National ESEA Conference. Then over the summer I read her co-authored book Everyone Wins! The Evidence for Family-School Partnerships & Implications for Practice. In her presentation and throughout the book, Dr. Mapp underscored the importance of moving from informing parents and caregivers about their children’s learning to including families as active participants. It begins with building relationships through on-going conversations…

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Insect Symmetry – A Family Math Night Activity

Insect Symmetry – A Family Math Night Activity

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Math and art. It’s always a huge hit at our Family Math Night events. Since we were using our Gellin’ with Geometry kit and the event was in the spring, I decided to tie geometry and spring together and came up with a springtime symmetry activity. Enter our insect friends. The type of symmetry I focused on was bilateral symmetry. It’s the same as mirror or reflection symmetry except that when it comes to biological creatures – like our insect friends – biologists call…

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Fibonacci Flower Garden Collaborative Project

Fibonacci Flower Garden Collaborative Project

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I’m always looking for ways to combine math and art into a fun activity. I’m also always looking for ways to show students that we’re surrounded by math in ways we aren’t necessarily aware of. That brings me to a recent Family Math Night Collaborative Project. In this project I used the Fibonacci numbers to have participants create a Fibonacci Flower Garden. Fibonacci numbers are a sequence of numbers that are generated by adding the previous two numbers starting with 0 and…

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