When I visit schools, I am often asked to do a "Family Math Night" so that parents can learn about MathStart and how they can help their kids be better at math.

Everybody knows that children who are read to become better readers, but many parents are stumped when it comes to "doing math" with their kids. They don't realize that they actually do math all the time. Think about it: How do you figure out how much pizza to order, or pay for a pizza, or tell a driver where to deliver a pizza, or even divide a pizza without using math?

Math is essential to pizza! More to the point, math is essential to daily life.

There are two articles on Family Math in this section:

Family Learning: Rising Together with Mathematics by Grace Dávila Coates, director of the Family Math program at the University of California at Berkeley, talks about the importance of helping parents overcome their own math-phobias so they can better help their children.

Over the last 20 years, thousands of teachers have attended Family Math workshops to learn how to set up courses in local schools to the benefit of hundreds of thousands of parents and kids. The article includes links and phone numbers for information on upcoming workshops and Family Math books.

Doing Math Together! is about my experiences with Family Math Nights and includes suggestions for math-related activities that can be done at home or even in the car.

When parents and kids approach math with a shared sense of adventure and challenge, everybody wins!