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Family Math Night Collaborative Project: Rose Window

Family Math Night Collaborative Project: Rose Window

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I’m very excited to share with you my latest Family Math Night Collaborative Project: Rose Window. I was inspired to do this project after visiting the beautiful Chartres Cathedral in France.

Here is the final result:

The theme for this rose window is geometry and fractions. I can’t think of a more fun way to get in some important work in fractions! As with each of my Family Math Night Collaborative Projects, I put together a video where I walk you through each of the three activities and give tips on station set-up.

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Family Math Night Project Series: Bug Box

Family Math Night Project Series: Bug Box

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I’m very excited to share with you our newest Family Math Night product line designed around hands-on projects in math. We’re calling it our Project Series and the first one, just released, is Project: Bug Box.

Hands-on and super fun, this Family Math Night Bug Box station will get the creative juices flowing! Participants choose one of their favorite (plastic!) bugs and use 2- and 3-dimensional geometry along with number skills to create a rectangular prism. Participants will walk away with a custom designed box for their bug which they get to bring home and share with others.

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What Do You Notice? poster – Crossed Lines

What Do You Notice? poster – Crossed Lines

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Skills:
K-2: colors, counting, even/odd numbers
3-5: multiplication, even/odd numbers, multiples of 3, square numbers

Crossed lines is an easy strategy for learning multiplication facts. The horizontal and vertical lines represent the factors in the multiplication problem. For example, in the problem 4 x 3, students would draw 4 horizontal lines and then intersect them with 3 vertical lines as is shown in the last example above. The intersection of the lines is the answer to the problem. So for 4 x 3, there would be 12 intersections.

To make the strategy more visible, I used colored dots to highlight the intersections. I was deliberate in the colors I chose. The green dots represent an even product and the pink dots represent an odd product. Notice how all the products are multiples of 3. At a higher level, older students may notice that 3 x 3 makes a square and 9 is a square number.

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What Do You Notice? Descriptions

What Do You Notice? Descriptions

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What Do You Notice? Rectangular Arrays

Skills:
Primary students (K-2): shapes, counting, repeated addition, area
Intermediate students (3-5): classifying quadrilaterals, area model of multiplication, multiplication, prime, composite, and square numbers

It’s been on my TO DO list for a long time. Years, in fact. But I’ve finally checked it off and I’m thrilled with the results.

As many of you know, for each of my Family Math Night events I include a What Do You Notice? poster. These posters are designed to get kids and parents thinking about math on a deeper level. Although each poster has been included on our website, there has never been details…until now. I’ve taken each of the posters and written a thorough description of the math involved. I’ve also included the specific skills by grade span, K-2 and 3-5, and given several examples of student responses.

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Family Math Night Make-N-Take Kit

Family Math Night Make-N-Take Kit

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We all know that when parents get involved in their child’s education, student learning increases.  What better way to get parents actively involved in important skills than through fun and engaging games that reinforce classroom learning?  That’s the idea behind the newest addition to our Family Math Night kit series:  Make-N-Take Station Kit. Designed to give students practice in important number skills, our Make-N-Take Kit is the perfect way to make sure your K-5 students continue the learning at home….

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