MEXICO — Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles gathered around their little ones Thursday night to watch their youngsters learn how much fun math can be.

It was the second year for Math Night at Meroby Elementary School and nearly 200 family members and youngsters turned out to have fun playing games that involved numbers.

“This is the first time we’ve come. It’s new to us, but it’s great for the kids to have fun while learning,” said Debbie Dupont, who with her husband, Duke, watched their niece, first-grader Fallon Gammon, play Addition War with fourth-grade teacher Shane Smith.

In another corner of the school’s gymnasium, third-grade teacher Alan Tacheny performed math magic and arithmetrix with a deck of cards in front of another group of youngsters, including 6-year-old Brooke Brown.

Brooke pulled a card from the deck, then named the number and tried to spell it.

Her mom, Kelly Blanchard, thought the evening devoted to numbers was really enjoyable.

“This shows how math can be fun,” she said.

Donald Coulombe of Rumford brought his niece and nephew to the event.

“They are learning to multiply, subtract, divide and add, all without computers,” he said.

At another table, Vanessa Bartlett was playing a dice game with her son, 6-year-old Wyatt.

“I love math night,” she said. “We can learn extra things for more games at home.”

Meroby Principal Melanie Chasse said the annual event is presented for several purposes, including as another way for children’s families to be involved in the school.

“We’ve been doing lots of different activities. And we have a new math program. We need to put more emphasis on facts, and we want the students and families to have fun with it,” she said.

Each family was given a blue plastic bag filled with lots of math-related items that parents can use at home with their children. Pencils, a calculator, play money, a deck of cards for number games, and dice can all be used to teach or reinforce various math principals, she said.

Also in the packet were lots of tips on how to make math part of everyday life, from the numbers used in cooking to those used when shopping.

The new math program and math night are also ways the school is working to improve math scores under the federal No Child Left Behind mandate.

“Our school didn’t perform as well in math as the state wants,” Chasse said.

For fifth-grader Nick McInnis, as he watched Tacheny use a deck of cards for math lessons, he thought the activity night was “cool.”

Copy the Story Link