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Power Packs – Building Number Sense

Power Packs – Building Number Sense

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We know that parent involvement in their child’s education can have a significant impact on academic success. Our current situation has helped reinforce the role parents and caregivers have as active participants in the education of their children.

But there have been a lot of changes in mathematics curriculum and pedagogy in recent years and a lot of parents don’t feel as prepared as they’d like to be when it comes to helping their child in math. That’s why we created our Power Pack: Building Number Sense series, a set of dice games that families can play to reinforce important number skills.

The power of these Power Packs comes in the integration of strategies and tools that parents use as they play the games with their children. Helping parents understand these tools and strategies has become even more important to better facilitate remote learning. With that in mind, I created short instructional videos of each of the tools and strategies included in the Power Packs because it’s important that parents understand why we are teaching the way we are. These videos help underscore the importance of focusing on number sense when children are learning mathematics.

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Developing Math Minds at Home Parent Guide

Developing Math Minds at Home Parent Guide

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I’m happy to announce that our parent guide Developing Math Minds at Home is now complete.

The guide was designed to help families support math learning at home. As parents work on reinforcing math skills, it’s also important that we show them how to help their children develop a strong math mind. As we describe in the guide, “Children with a strong math mind are comfortable using math. They understand that math is a useful part of our everyday lives and are confident using it to solve problems.”

The guide underscores what the current research says about how children learn math and includes topics such as:

  • Fostering a Growth Mindset
  • Supporting a Positive Attitude Towards Mathematics
  • Promoting Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills
  • Developing Number Sense
  • Solving Problems a Variety of Ways
  • Embracing Mistakes
  • Encouraging Positive Self-Talk

We also have a Spanish version of the booklet.  For a sample page, check out our website.

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Family Math Night Home Edition

Family Math Night Home Edition

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Family Math Nights are usually done at school but I created one that families can do at home. This comprehensive resource includes video tutorials, check lists, materials lists, and activity sheets for four home-friendly activities for grades K-5. I’m including the video below.

My goal was to design the Family Math Night/Day to be different than simply doing a math activity at the kitchen table. It’s their own personal event and I walk them through how to do it step-by-step. Watch the video below for tips on making it a special event.

Here is the link so you can access all the activity PDFs:
https://familymathnight.com/resources/mathathome.php

Here is the link so you can access the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GknJtgZ47KQ

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What Do You Notice? Lego Blocks

What Do You Notice? Lego Blocks

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Skills:
K-2: counting, subitizing, geometric shapes
3-5: skip counting, repeated addition, multiplication, beginning algebra

Although there are no numbers represented, this What Do You Notice? poster is filled with number concepts. Young students should be able to quickly recognize that there are 4 circles on each square (subitizing). From there, they can decide how they want to count circles. Maybe they want to count just the circles on the pink squares or blue squares. Or maybe they want to count all the circles to arrive at the total number. Others may notice the squares and decide to count how many squares there are all together.

Older students can use repeated addition to determine the total number of squares (4 + 4 + 4 or 3 + 3 + 3 + 3) or they can multiply 3 x 4 or 4 x 3.

There are a variety of ways these students can determine the total number of circles: skip counting by fours; determining the total number of circles in a row and multiplying that by 3; multiplying the total number of squares by 4, multiplying 6 circles x 8 circles, etc.

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Grid Dots: A Family Math Night ‘What Do You Notice?’ poster

Grid Dots: A Family Math Night ‘What Do You Notice?’ poster

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Grid Dots

Skills:
K-2: subitizing, counting, colors, shapes, pattern
3-5: counting, shapes, even, odd, addition, subtraction, multiplication

Subitizing, being able to quickly recognize the total amount without having to count each member of the group, is an important part of developing number sense. In the primary grades, students who subitize are able to count on from the subitized number. In upper elementary, students can use subitizing to break a larger group into smaller equal groups to find the total. In this 10 x 10 grid, I used colored sticky dots to create opportunities for students to subitize.

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