June 2022
Welcome to EFM's June Newsletter!
News
Survey We are always looking to improve EFM, and we would like your help. Please fill out this quick 5-minute survey so that we can better support you. Please click on this text to take our survey - Thank you!
Storybooks We are pleased to announce that our beginning storybooks are now available in Spanish! Work has begun translating the intermediate storybooks to Spanish as well as translating the beginning storybooks to German.
Math Anywhere and Everywhere
While on our daily walk around the neighborhood, my wife and I came across a father with a child in a stroller at a stop sign.
The child pointed up at the sign and said a single word: “Octagon.”
The father was floored! He didn’t know where his child had learned this word and was pleasantly surprised by this moment of math.
What a wonderful example of the power of exposing children to all sorts of things and never underestimating how much they can absorb.
Math is all around us all the time. As adults, it is our responsibility to share the fun, mystery, and beauty of this mathematical ubiquity with our children. I see math in all sorts of numbers around me. Addresses in our neighborhood have numbers between 800 and 1600, and I play games in my head as I walk by. I look for patterns (ABAB like 1212, ABBA like 1221, progressions like 1234 or 1248); how addresses rise or fall in increments or 2 or 4 or more; and which side of the street has odd numbers and which has even numbers. With your child, you can look for patterns in the full street address or begin with just the tens and ones digits.
While adding math to our surroundings (as promoted by public-math.org, mathwalks.org, mathtalk.org, among others) is a fun way to get math into the public eye, there is plenty of math naturally out there to be enjoyed and played with.
I Spy
Materials: None.
Preparation: Nearly none.
Can be played anywhere, at any time.
This classic game is wonderful for discussing properties of objects. Identifying, describing, and comparing properties is a key component of early math education. I Spy benefits from how easy it is for the adult or child to begin playing anytime they like, without any preparation. “I spy a shape with six sides” or “I spy with my little eye four things that are the same size” immediately starts the search without any further ado.
The descriptions given can be done in many ways depending on the skill level of the child. The description can be in terms of numbers, shapes, geometry, colors, sizes, patterns, comparisons, groups of objects with some property, or any other mathematical ideas that seem interesting. They can also target any particular mathematical element the child may be learning at the moment.
The descriptions can vary tremendously. Here are a few examples:
I spy something blue with three sides.
I spy a group of numbers that can be added and subtracted to make 13 – what are they and how did I get 13?
I spy a group of 3 objects with the same shape but all have different sizes.
I spy 6 objects that have a repeating pattern.
I spy a group of objects that are all tall and narrow.
I spy a number that has exactly two prime factors.
Scavenger Hunts
Materials: None or optional homemade, printed, or purchased cards.
Preparation: None if no cards. Minimal if cards: group cards by relevant area and keep them available.
Similarities to I Spy: Uses the same types of clues, but phrased as “Find… ” rather than “I Spy…”
Differences from I Spy:
At the time of the hunt, there may be no visible object that matches a particular description (e.g., “Find something blue and something red”).
Scavenger hunt clues are often written down in some way, often with one description per card, with decks of cards (perhaps tied together) grouped by location (the park, your backyard, the kitchen, your child’s bedroom, the library, or anywhere else you like to hang out). They may be drawn or include photographs to help children who don’t yet read.
There are commercial products, such as that by Mollybee Kids, and there are plenty of online ideas, such as the Stanford DREME project’s scavenger hunt page; however, it is easy enough to make your own.
Ways to play:
Cooperatively: Select a few cards and cooperatively see how many of the cards you can satisfy. Then, describe properties the three share and properties that they don’t.
Competitively:
Draw five cards each and see who can find the most of their cards.
With enough cards, you can randomly create Bingo boards and see who can get Bingo first on their board.
Fun Math Talk
I hope these have given you lots of ideas that your family can enjoy as you show your child the math that is all around them all the time and that it is a lot of fun!
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
June 18, 2022
Chris@EarlyFamilyMath.org
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Early Family Math is a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, #87-4441486.