Dear Parents,

Our kindergarten is using the Everyday Mathematics Program to teach math concepts. 

Over the course of the year, your child will do many hands-on activities related to mathematical topics, including counting, numeration, measurement, geometry, patterns, sorting, data collecting, and calendar use.  Classroom routines such as keeping track of the days of school, helping with attendance and observing and graphing weather and temperature give children real-life opportunities to develop and refine math skills and become math thinkers.  Periodically you will receive “Home Links” which suggest ways to help your child by doing math activities at home.

The mathematics activities that make up Kindergarten Everyday Math are meaningful and productive and are designed to help children build a solid understanding of math skills and concepts.  Research has shown that children have more success with written and symbolic math in later grades if they have a kindergarten experience that builds a strong foundation based on experience and understanding.

Everyday Mathematics is a Kindergarten-Grade 6 curriculum.   Content in the early grades begins with concrete experiences.  Topics, concepts, and skills are revisited in varied ways and contexts over time, integrating new learning with previous knowledge and experiences.  Children will revisit and build upon skills and concepts throughout the Kindergarten year.  They will continue to develop their understanding of topics that they encounter in Kindergarten as they move through later grades.

As children participate in Kindergarten Everyday Mathematics activities, they will find that math is useful, enjoyable, varied, and meaningful.  Just as telling stories and reading books to children helps foster a love of reading, your involvement in your child’s ongoing math experiences will help him or her develop lasting excitement, confidence, and competence in math.

Dear Parents,

     During these last few weeks, the children have been working with number concepts and various number computations.  The ideas of patterning , sorting and classifying, comparing, counting and graphing which the children have been working on during the year is the foundation on which this work with number is based.  The children will explore the relationships between the operations of addition and subtraction, representing these relationships first with concrete materials and then with numerical symbols.

     Research has shown that too many children learn to give the correct answers to problems they have no understanding of whatsoever.  Children should not be asked to decode symbols on a page and try to covert those symbols into meaning for the purpose of filling in the “correct answer”.  Children should have meaningful mathematical experiences and use mathematical symbols to record those experiences.  For example, the children might explore the number 6 with toothpicks and create designs like the following:

Then the children might analyze their work and write an equation to describe their design:

     In this activity each individual child’s thinking and contribution is highly valued.  The child’s senses, creative powers, and mathematical skill is involved at a much higher level than with pages and pages of drill.

     If you would like to reinforce number operations at home during the next few months, you might do any of the following activities:

  1. Ask your child to guess the number of any of the following items in your home and then count them together:  beds, rooms in the house, pillows, windows, doors, dolls, trucks, stuffed animals, clocks, shoes, stairs or chairs.

  2.  While watching T.V. count the number of commercials they show during each commercial break.  Can you guess how many commercials there will be before the next break?  How many commercials are there altogether during the show?

  3.  Look for objects around the house that have numbers on them:  clocks, telephone, house number, radios, shoes, clothing labels, TV set, bathroom scales, prices on objects, pages in books, newspapers etc.  Discuss the purpose of the numbers with your child.

  4.  Check to be sure that your child can tell you his or her phone number and address.

     I hope you enjoy these activities, feel free to call if you have any questions.

                                  Mrs. Sanfilippo