At Home with Math

In getting ready for conferences tomorrow I was trying to prepare some simple math games that I can teach to and send home with a few families so they can help their children with math skills at home. I came across this great site called At Home with Math. My favorite part about the site is that the information is presented in the exact same format in English and Spanish (yay!) which is terrific because one of my students who struggles in math has a mom whose primary language is Spanish and this saves me the work of translating the documents. They will contain the same images as the documents in English which is important when sending information home in more than one language. The documents, although written in different languages, should look the same and one should never be of a lesser quality than the other.

This site offers 10 activities (with extensions and alternative versions) that parents can do with their children at home. What is great is that the math activities incorporate typical household activities and materials such as cleaning up toys, junk mail, coupons, and sharing which makes them easy to incorporate into daily routines.

I always feel conflicted about giving families extra "work" to do at home, but often I find that parents enjoy these kinds of activities and are very interested in helping their kids and they appreciate suggestions. Often parents want to help but may not know how or what kinds of skills they should be helping with.

I am going to print out packets in both languages to have ready for a few of my kiddos tomorrow. I think when informing parents about what skills their child needs to work on, it is always helpful to provide examples of how to practice and to give parents materials to use so they can go home with a plan!