March 2022
Welcome to EFM's March Newsletter!
Early Family Math Turns 1!
Like the young people we work with, we are extremely pleased with reaching our first year! This feels like a good moment to look back on what we have accomplished so far.
The EFM website has had 6000 visitors from 83 countries who have made 3000 downloads.
We have 160 activities consisting of roughly 80 games, 40 puzzles, 30 activities, and 10 investigations covering material up through single-digit multiplication. These activities are available in 14 languages.
We have 60 annotated storybooks in English, and look forward to starting to translate those in the coming months.
We have 15 videos showing examples of our activities being used by families.
Our newsletter has 100 subscribers (thank you!).
We have had $2500 in unsolicited donations.
We have just become a nonprofit California corporation certified as a 501(c)3 charity by the IRS.
We have 13 people who have teamed up to bring enjoyable math education to families around the world. More are welcome!
I want to thank all who have helped EFM in one form or another during this year. We have a great deal yet to accomplish, and we would love to have your help. Please join us!
Waxing Philosophical
I would like to take the occasion of EFM's first birthday to be a bit philosophical about EFM's program. Next month I will return to identifying a source of excellent math activities and featuring a select group of those activities.
Why Not Use Worksheets and Drills?
While very limited use of worksheets, drills, flashcards and the like are occasionally useful for skill reinforcement and identification of weaknesses, we strongly believe that their use be kept limited. The routine use of such tools in some math education programs is one of the strong contributors to why so many people grow up disliking math.
Math is a beautiful discipline full of wonder, joy, explorations, challenges, and insights. Being involved with real math leads to individual growth in areas such as problem solving, persistence, grit, and communication. I know, that all sounds very grand, but what does that have to do with my four-year old?
It has everything to do with your child! Just as you would want a child to grow up with art, music, and stories, you should want a child to have the richness of math and all its benefits be a part of their life. Those who reduce math to mechanical, tiresome, isolating exercises of routine tasks are sucking the life out of a subject that can be incredibly valuable and fulfilling.
Most adults have had unfortunate experiences in their math education, and so they pass along negative attitudes to their children. It is essential that adults be involved in the playfulness of math and see that math is something they can enjoy and be successful with — that way they can break the cycle of negativity and offer the next generation positive experiences with math.
Can Games and Puzzles Teach Math?
Playing with games and puzzles may seem frivolous and a waste of time to some. Nothing could be further from the truth! Children, and adults, learn best through play and things that feel like play to them. It has been said that doing math games and puzzles are to math what stories and literature are to reading. The analogy is not perfect, but the point is still powerful.
Many people have written about the effectiveness of using play in math education. Dan Finkel wrote in his blog about the effectiveness of play for those who used the classroom curriculum he created for Love for Math. Similarly, Dan's four part video series on Rich Learning talks about how play and exploration can drive exciting math education in classrooms. Of course, Dan is not the only one. You can look at any of the websites I have highlighted in this newsletter over the last half year for examples of organizations that believe play is essential to math education. Three more examples are the work of Scott Kim, Peter Liljedahl in Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, and Jo Boaler.
There are many compelling examples from EFM's activities showing the very tangible difference between traditional math worksheets and learning through math games and solving puzzles. I have picked out a few examples here:
Sum Groups In Chapter 3 and Enclosed Sums and DiffTriangles and SumTriangles in Chapter 4.
Turning the Tables, Revealing Products, The Product Game, Grabbing Factors, Cross Products in Chapter 5.
These examples offer a child more engaging ways to interact with arithmetic material, and they lead to deeper understandings and explorations of number relationships. As a very simple example, a child will learn much more from exploring how to start with three and do one or more additions to get eight, than being asked the boring question of what three plus five is.
Are Strategy Games Math Games?
The short answer is: Yes! An activity need not have any explicit numbers or other obvious math connection to be valuable to a child's math education. Strategy games such as chess will develop important skills such as problem solving and persistence that are useful in math and in the rest of life.
The natural question at this point is: Why do "math" games at all if any strategy game will do? There are several reasons. One is that the mathematical part of a math game can be quite beautiful and interesting in its own right. Discovering and learning how to use a math strategy, such as the one for Nim, can be a great experience. The second reason is that there are lots of entertaining and interesting mathematical strategy games, so why not choose a game that improves your child's arithmetic or geometry skills at the same time as challenging their strategy skills.
Have Fun and Play With Math Together!
Whichever math activities you choose, the most important thing is that your child enjoys them and experiences everyone in the family having fun with them together!
If you have any questions or comments, please send them my way. I would enjoy the opportunity to chat with you. Also, if you are interested in collaborating with us or supporting us in any fashion, I would love to talk with you about ways we can work together.
Chris Wright
March 18, 2022
chris@kitchentablemath.com