Mathtubs are Coming!, The

Teaching Pre K-8, Jan 2005 by Currie, Stephen

A curious advertising campaign piques math interest -for both kids and their parents

This year, for the first time ever, we had Bathtubs in our school. They arrived with a flourish early in September, and they were quite a hit. They - whoops, sorry for the typo. I don't mean Bathtubs; I mean Mathtubs. Well, let me back up and start at the beginning.

The next best thing. I work as a math specialist for grades K-4 at Poughkeepsie Day School in Poughkeepsie, NY. Part of my mission is to make the math curriculum more visible to families. Although my school has an active and involved parent body, they're not always aware of what their children are doing in math. Math journal entries and worksheets give families a rough idea of what is going on, but they don't even begin to describe the range of mathematical thinking that takes place in the classroom. Ideally, parents would visit my classroom and watch math in action, but in these busy times, few have the time or opportunity.

So I set out to do the next best thing - send the math classroom home with the children. First, I bought sturdy plastic tubs with carrying handles and locking lids at an office supply store. Each one costs a few dollars, but the price has been well worth it.

Then I stocked each tub with a variety of math activities according to grade level. Each tub included math games and puzzles, two or more different kinds of manipulatives such as number cubes or tangrams and math challenges - questions which required no materials but creative brain power. I made many of the activities from paper and cardboard and made sure that they could be played by children and their families together.

No homework! After packing the tubs, I wrote an instruction booklet with rules for the games and suggestions for activities that families could try with their kids. I stressed that the tub activities were not 'homework' assignments and encouraged the children and their families to try any or all of the activities as time allowed.

I also made sure that I included a feedback sheet for parents to comment about what they thought about the activities and their family's involvement with them.

Next step, advertise. Yes, advertise! Retailers know that it's important to create a market for their product; mathtubs are no different. I wanted to get kids and their families curious about the tubs before they ever came home. I constructed signs on rolls of newsprint. "BATHTUBS ARE COMING!" the signs screamed in large red capital letters. Next, I hung the signs in strategic locations around the school.

Within a day or two, there was quite a buzz around the school about bathtubs. Everyone was talking about them. Students quickly zeroed in on me as the sign maker - perhaps I wasn't secretive enough about hanging them! In any case, I fielded dozens of questions over the next week, mostly of the, "Bathtubs? What are bathtubs?" variety. I bit back the obvious response and turned the question back to them in typical teacher-style: "What do you think these signs are all about?"

Curiouser and curiouser. Early the next week, I slapped a big red cutout 'M' over the first 'B' on the signs. Now kids demanded to know what a "mathtub" was. I gave them what I hoped was a mysterious smile and told them they would soon find out. The advertising was more than successful - by that time, virtually every kid in the school was beside him or herself with curiosity. Later that week in an assembly, I showed clamoring students an actual mathtub and explained how they were going to be used. Indeed, I have seldom had a more attentive audience.

Everybody gets a turn. Then each Friday, I began to give out mathtubs to children selected at random. I explained that the tubs were due back the next Wednesday. This gave the kids plenty of time to explore and me plenty of time to track down missing tubs before turning them over to the next person. A few times I had to make phone calls to get tubs back and I found that little things disappeared from them from time to time. But the materials were inexpensive and easy to make, so the loss of an occasional game piece or manipulative was far from tragic. Interest continued throughout the year. When I walked into the classrooms on Fridays, I was besieged with a chorus of, "Who gets the mathtub this week?" By the end of the year, every child in the school had had a turn.

Fun for the whole family. Feedback from parents was positive and helpful. Several families called my attention to unclear instructions. Others suggested types of materials that they would like to see included in the future. In general, the parents appreciated the activities and were pleased to see their child engaged in mathematical thinking. The adults appreciated the tubs for other reasons, too. As one woman wrote, "I wish we had more time (meaning my husband and I) to play with it!"

INTERNET CONNECTIONS

Topic: Math Centers

1 Figure This! Math Challenges: www.figurethis.org Parent brochures in Spanish and English to help families with math at home. Download and print math challenges (also indexed by skill area) - a great way to fill a mathtub.