Parents and kids play math games

Stewart Elementary School hosted a fun night of math-related games and activities for children and their parents. Attendees, of which there were just under 200, were treated to a meal in the gymnasium, where there were also games. Kids had to throw bean bags into buckets or land them in hoops, and each bucket or hoop had a point value associated with it. The exercise was intended to provide a fun way of learning addition.

Kindergarten teacher Jill Bader supervised one of the many ?stations? throughout the school. Bader was in the computer lab where kids played math games at various Web sites. Preschooler Rafael Miranda was there with his mother Latasha Miranda. Latasha said the games he was playing were quite simple and consisted of recognizing shapes and faces.

?He loves doing games on the computer,? she said.

Bader said she uses the computers on a daily basis in her kindergarten class. She said the kids go to the computer lab three times a week to do reading and math exercises. The programs track the students? progress so the teachers and parents can see how their children are doing.

?In Kindergarten, my kids can log on to the computer and do the programs by themselves,? she said. ?The reading programs teaches them to recognize certain words from fun books. In math, they?re to recognize patterns, shapes and numbers. They learn which numbers are bigger than others.?

A dozen or so parents and their kids congregated in the library to play board games that incorporated counting and basic mathematics such as addition and subtraction. Second-grader Harley Miller played ?Candyland? with his father Michael Miller.

?I think this is great,? Michael said. ?They didn?t have this when I was a kid. I wished they did. I have a lot of fun now, so I can imagine how much fun I would have if I were a kid.?

First-grade teacher Cindy Lebsack gathered all of the math-related books from the library and took them to her room. Parents went to the room and read the books to their children. There were several books dedicated to counting such as ?Count Your Way to Mexico? and ?Count Your Way in Africa.?