Math Mornings Engage Students and Parents in Hands-On Problem Solving

Each grade in the Lower School hosts a Math Morning filled with hands-on activities for students and their parents to complete together. This week, Math Mornings took place in junior kindergarten, senior kindergarten and 3rd grade.

In JK students practiced counting, ten frames and number formation skills as the proprietors of a bank and several stores, including a bakery, ice cream shop, flower shop and grocery store. They created pattern bead snakes and dot counting books and investigated “number neighbors,” finding numbers that come before and after a given numeral.

The theme for the SK Math Morning was “Math About Me.” Students and their parents completed colorful worksheets that answered such questions as the number of people in their family, how many teeth they have lost, and how many pets they own. Domino addition and matching with playing cards also were popular activities.

In third grade, students are learning to draw and label bar models to represent real-world problems. Drawing bar models helps students to visualize and construct pictures that help them make sense of the relationship between the values given in word problems.

“Our Math Mornings provide an opportunity for parents to have a window into some of the most important work their children do: constructing their mathematical thinking. Number sense and relationships, patterns, quantity and problem-solving are woven into the activities we share with parents as well as some of the unique approaches found in the Math In Focus program,” said Lower School Head Janet McMillion. “The children are able to share with (and teach!) their parents some of what they do every day, and judging by the smiles and conversations I observed, math is also a lot of fun.”