November 16 – 20 is American Education Week. We hope you will take the opportunity to share with your child the importance of a good education. Tell them some of your own educational experiences. We have several events planned at Merry to celebrate this important week.

Improving our students’ math understanding and achievement is a school-wide goal and you can help. Your home is full of opportunities to explore math with your child and, at the same time, build his or her self-confidence and understanding of mathematical ideas. This is a chance for you and your child to “talk math”, to communicate about math while discovering relationships between numbers. Being able to describe mathematical patterns and relationships, such as those between “addition and subtraction” or “odd and even numbers” is important to later success in math.

Ask your child to gather some change in his or her hand without showing what it is. Start with amounts of 25 cents or less (for first-graders you can start with pennies and nickels). Ask your child to tell you how much money and how many coins there are. Guess which coins are being held. For example, “I have 17 cents and 5 coins. What coins do I have?”

How many ways can you make 10 cents, 25 cents, 35 cents, 40 cents, or 50 cents? You can help your child add the coins in various ways to get different answers.

Coin games help children learn the value of coins. They also teach counting, addition, subtraction and multiplication. Coupons can help teach children money management, as well as subtraction and percentages.