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Regardless of whether you call it a math fair, math carnival, school math night, or family math night, hosting one of these events at your school is a great way to get parents involved in their child’s education. The basic idea of a math fair is to have parents come with their child and participate together in various math activities. The math fair gives teachers the opportunity to show parents what the students are learning.
There are a few details that need to be taken care of before the actual math fair:
Prepare flyers or invitations for the students to take home.
Make sure you have at least one volunteer for each activity station, and try to have stations set up so more than one parent-student combination can participate at a time.
You may want to include handouts or worksheets that students can take home, even a tip sheet for parents to help their children learn the concepts presented at that station.
Decide whether you will have separate rooms or groups for different grade levels or whether you will set up one room with activities that can be done by everyone.
Activities Math fair activities should get the students and parents involved, preferably working together, to solve math problems. Try to set up activities that will allow students to complete more than one while the fair is going on.
Scavenger hunt – A scavenger hunt can be an activity that goes on throughout the math fair, or it can be one station in the fair. Give students a list that involves measuring and solving problems. For example, students can find something that weighs 10 grams or measures 10 centimeters. Clues can involve math riddles, and the answer to the riddle is what the students are trying to find. Encourage parents and students to work as a team.
Probability games – This can be as simple as predicting heads or tails for coin flips. Variations could include the probability of finding matching socks in a suitcase or matching gloves in a box.
Bean bag toss – For a mathematical twist on the bean bag toss, have parents toss bean bags at cards on the floor. The cards have math problems on them, and the students have to answer the math problem to get prizes.
Shopping cart – Use plastic food items or other items for students to purchase from a store station. They are given a limit on how much they can spend, and must select items from the store without going over budget.
o For one variation, you can give each student an envelope of play money. They will need to count their money to determine their budget, then plan their purchases accordingly. o Another version of this game would be to use a restaurant menu and let the students figure out what to eat and drink based on their budgets. o For students that are working on percentages, you can even include sales tax on the purchases. Students will need to estimate how much they can spend before taxes to keep from going over their budget.
Encouraging Attendance
Try some of the following ideas to increase attendance:
Serve pizza. Not only will students want to come for the free pizza, but also you can use the pizza cutting and serving to discuss fractions. Participants don’t receive a slice of pizza, but one-tenth or one-eight of a pizza.
Free homework passes. Give students who attend and participate a free homework pass. The pass is good for one homework free night.
Publicize the event in the school newsletter or on school bulletin boards. Even the local newspaper is a good place for placing information about the math fair.
Reward math students by allowing them to create a station for the math fair. The students will be excited about having their own station, so they will tell friends and family…repeatedly.
The most important thing to remember is to have fun. The math fair is not about right and wrong answers. The object is to get the parents involved with their children’s schoolwork, to show parents what the children are doing, and to let the students have a good time while doing math.
Robert McKenzie is a former teacher. Visit his Math Lessons website for Elementary Teachers for Elementary Math Worksheets, Math games and lesson plans.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
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