It All Adds Up: Connecting Home and School through Family Math

Abstract

Considered a core component of children’s foundational cognitive development, early mathematics experiences can support children’s long-term academic success. Teachers and families alike share the common goal of wanting children to succeed developmentally, socially, and academically. Given the importance of early mathematics to academic success in all subjects, children need and deserve to build a robust knowledge of early math concepts in their earliest years. In this chapter, we consider the approach of the Young Mathematicians (YM) project at EDC, which for the past ten years, has partnered with families, teachers, and early childhood programs in richly diverse communities with large populations of students of color, linguistically minoritized students, and students living in poverty, to support math learning across home and school environments. We illustrate some of our fun early learning games that engage teachers and families alike and are freely available in multiple languages for anyone to use. We discuss how our close collaboration with families and teachers has informed our approach to equity and report on some of the positive results from our research. Finally, we reflect on ways we can all improve how we are partnering with families and teachers to create equitable and supportive learning communities.