August 2022
Welcome to EFM's August Newsletter!
News
Family Math Fest Together with the Encinitas Library, we will be hosting our first Family Math Fest on September 1 in the main library for Encinitas, California. We are excited to be working with families in person to help them experience the joys of early math learning. We also hope this will lead to joint math festivals where half of the festival is for older children and the other half is for families with EFM-aged children.
Donation An anonymous donor has given us $3000 toward our Activity Playing Cards project. These decks of playing cards will have an EFM activity on the face of each card. They will be great gifts at schools and Family Math Fest events, and will provide an easy way for families to have a great selection of EFM activities immediately at their finger tips. Another donor gave us $500 for unspecified uses. We very much appreciate these gifts and the support they represent for our programs.
Twitter As part of our ever expanding effort to be more visible on social media, you can now find EFM on Twitter as well as Facebook and Instagram. We hope you enjoy our posts.
New Activities to Enjoy!
The activities this month come from Education Above All (EAA). EAA is a very large nonprofit organization dedicated to improving education throughout the world, especially for vulnerable and marginalized communities in the developing world. Among their many programs, their website has a large collection of math games and activities. These activities are written more for teachers than for families, but quite a few of them work just fine in a standard home environment.
While EAA has some activities that involve problem solving, such as the 24 game, their activities are more oriented toward building basic proficiency with numeracy and geometry. This is all too common in very early math education. Educators often limit their goals to having students attain basic mathematical skill proficiency. While that is a laudable goal, it needlessly omits parts of mathematics that are extremely valuable, such as problem solving, pattern identification, critical thinking, logical discussions, and persistence. It also omits some beautiful parts of mathematics, such as experiencing solving a puzzle or seeing some of the deeper mathematical structures that lie beneath the surface.
Shape Charades
Number of players: 2 or more. With enough players, you can split into two teams and compete, but this can also be fun and silly with just two people.
Objective: Get your team (or other player, when playing with 2 people) to correctly guess the shape you picked.
Materials: A way to choose shapes. Here are the options:
Make a small deck of cards with drawings of one shape per card.
Make a small deck of cards with written names of one shape per card (if your child is beginning to read).
Use a collection of physical shapes
Rules: The current player secretly picks a card or shape. The player then tries to get the player's team to guess the shape. The player does this by forming the shape with their body without using any words or sounds.
Variations:
Typically, players would not be allowed to use hands or fingers to make the shape, but you can relax this rule for very young players.
Players may choose to add rules, like whether it’s okay to use the ground as part of the shape.
Two people may create shapes together using both bodies.
Teams may create lists of shapes for the other team to guess.
An advanced variation is to have descriptions of the shapes on a card. For example, you could have "four equal sides" or "four right angles" on a card.
Bulls Eye!
Objective: This simple game of throwing things at a target provides lots of opportunity to practice basic adding while doing something active.
Materials: First, create some targets.You have many options for the targets:
Have a small target on a normal piece of paper, and throw small objects (such as paper clips) at it from a very short distance.
Use a very large piece of paper and throw small things at it (such as wadded pieces of paper or a dry sponge).
Use tape or chalk on a hard surface, or you can draw in the dirt or sand, and make a big target to throw at from farther away.
For each region in the target, assign a value that is given if an object lands in that region. You can make up your own rule for what happens when the object is on a line, for example, you can give the higher value. Choose target values that provide addition practice for numbers your child is working on.
For more variation, you can make your targets triangular, square, hexagonal, or any shape your child enjoys.
Play: This can be played simply as: throw five times and see who gets the highest total score. A variation that adds more interest is to have a limit. You can use the limit in various ways. You can say that the person closest to the limit wins. You can say that if you go over the limit you lose. You can say that if a throw puts a player over the limit, then you subtract the limit from their current score and they continue. Make up your own rules that your children enjoy!
Triangle Tower
Playing Board: As described by EAA, the playing board is a triangle of ten numbers, as shown below. However, using their version of the rules, there is no special reason to use a triangle. For example, you can use a square that is 3 by 3. or a rectangle that is 3 by 4.
Set up: Each player starts by filling in numbers on their own individual playing board. The numbers are chosen from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20, 24, 25, 30, and 36 – all the numbers produced by multiplying (1 to 6) times (1 to 6).
Play: The players take turns rolling two dice. On a given turn, the player multiplies the numbers from the dice and marks that number as filled on their playing board. If they don't have that number, or if it has already been hit, you have two options - you can either have nothing further happen or you can allow the other players to mark that number on their boards if they have it.
The first person to fill up their board wins. A more interesting rule is to have the first person to get three or four in a row wins.
Strategy: The most important part of the game is the strategy in filling out the playing boards before the dice rolling begins. Some rolls, such as having a product of 6, are more likely to occur than others, such as a product of 1 or 5. So there is strategy involved in which numbers to choose and where to put them. Enjoy having discussions and arguments with your child about which choices are best.
Variations: One variation is to add the numbers on the two dice instead of multiplying them. For that variation, you will want to choose from the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.
Another variation is to multiply the numbers, but change the numbers slightly. For example, the first number rolled is used as is, but the second number has two added to it. So, if you rolled a 2 and then a 5, you would multiply 2 times 7. If you do this, you would need to change the collection of numbers used to be all the products of the numbers from 1 to 6 with the numbers from 3 to 8.
Challenge your child to figure out the list of numbers to work with in whichever option you choose. Involving your child in the creation of a game gives them more buy in and a deeper appreciation of what is going on.
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
August 18, 2022
Chris@EarlyFamilyMath.org
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Early Family Math is a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, #87-4441486.