Benjamin Franklin almost had it right when he penned the famous certainties in life, “death and taxes.” The third, which must not be overlooked, is “hard-working parents wanting what is best for their children.” Yep, that has a nice ring to it.
Image Credit: The Bakken Museum, Flickr
Maybe ol’ Ben assumed it to be true, therefore unnecessary to include. Maybe it didn’t fit on the line of paper. Whatever the reason for the omission, we’ll forgive him. After all, he contributed quite a bit to society.
Parents, for as long as it can be remembered, have been doing their best to provide for their children. Whether it is morals or mentality, ethics or education, it is our responsibility to bestow the good habits onto the next generation(s) so that they too have the best possible opportunity to be successful. That’s all easy when we draw it up in our heads, but how am I supposed to help my child with their math fluency?
Last year, my kindergarten son had the assignment of being read to on a nightly basis. Through the years, he will have a reading log, writing journals, and plenty of work to help him grow as an academic writer and reader. There will come a time, though, when he walks up to us with a sheet of math homework; will we be able to help? Have we been talking math with him throughout his life?
Fortunately, it is an incredible time to be an educator. In our book, The Classroom Chef, Matt Vaudrey and I discuss a number of ways to engage a class full of students, build a classroom culture where it is safe to take risks, and develop a curiosity for mathematics and the world around them. In the home, though, is a different story altogether.
Or is it?
Perhaps we’re just looking for different conversations around the dinner table.
Table Talk Math
TableTalkMath.com has been started to send a weekly newsletter to interested parents who want to engage in a discussion involving math. Maybe it’s a funky picture that begs questions; perhaps it’s a conundrum that a child (and the adult) will have to ponder before making a decision of which is better; it could be a question of mental math and how each person around the table went about solving it. Either way, the goal is to have a low bar of entry into a curiosity-building math prompt that all can enjoy, even if it’s only for a few minutes a week.
Included in every newsletter will be a prompt, some tips to get the conversation going, and hopefully a few words of advice from the creator/contributor. As parents, you want what is best for your child(ren) and this is one more small bit of support.
To sign up for the newsletter, head over to tabletalkmath.com and register today. Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter at @TableTalkMath and @jstevens009 for an occasional post that gets me thinking. If you have a contribution that you would like to see featured, email me at stevens009@gmail.com.
Parents, for as long as it can be remembered, have been doing their best to provide for their children. Whether it is morals or mentality, ethics or education, it is our responsibility to bestow the good habits onto the next generation(s) so that they too have the best possible opportunity to be successful. That’s all easy when we draw it up in our heads, but how am I supposed to help my child with their math fluency?
Last year, my kindergarten son had the assignment of being read to on a nightly basis. Through the years, he will have a reading log, writing journals, and plenty of work to help him grow as an academic writer and reader. There will come a time, though, when he walks up to us with a sheet of math homework; will we be able to help? Have we been talking math with him throughout his life?
Fortunately, it is an incredible time to be an educator. In our book, The Classroom Chef, Matt Vaudrey and I discuss a number of ways to engage a class full of students, build a classroom culture where it is safe to take risks, and develop a curiosity for mathematics and the world around them. In the home, though, is a different story altogether.
Or is it?
Perhaps we’re just looking for different conversations around the dinner table.
Table Talk Math
TableTalkMath.com has been started to send a weekly newsletter to interested parents who want to engage in a discussion involving math. Maybe it’s a funky picture that begs questions; perhaps it’s a conundrum that a child (and the adult) will have to ponder before making a decision of which is better; it could be a question of mental math and how each person around the table went about solving it. Either way, the goal is to have a low bar of entry into a curiosity-building math prompt that all can enjoy, even if it’s only for a few minutes a week.
Included in every newsletter will be a prompt, some tips to get the conversation going, and hopefully a few words of advice from the creator/contributor. As parents, you want what is best for your child(ren) and this is one more small bit of support.
To sign up for the newsletter, head over to tabletalkmath.com and register today. Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter at @TableTalkMath and @jstevens009 for an occasional post that gets me thinking. If you have a contribution that you would like to see featured, email me at stevens009@gmail.com.
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