[ehochee]

We are having a family math night at my school this week, and I am trying to come up with some fun activities for our third graders. I was thinking that a "make it, take it" type of activity would be good, but I'm at a loss after that! Thanks so much!

[salem]

In one of my classes for grad school we had to put on a Math Night for a local elementary school. My partner and I did tangrams. We cut out tangrams from foam sheets in all different colors, placed them in baggies, and made copies of different tangram animal shapes and the basic square. We also set out the book "Grandfather Tang's story."

Our booth was FULL as kids and adults triied to get those pieces back into a square or make the shape--and they swore we were missing a piece or had too many!

The tangrams were a hit---it did take us a while to cut them all out, but the foam was pretty cheap and easy to cut!

[Rancher]

We're having a Family Math Night on March 4th. Ours is designed around Measurement. Each grade is doing something connected with it. Our third grade station is doing weight. They have to get a sponge wet and estimate how much the water will weigh you squeeze from it. We're also doing an estimation of how much a handful of marbles weighs.

The tangram idea sounds great. We have a diecut of a tangram at out school so it would be real easy. I've cut them from the cheap plastic placemats and they hold up real well.

There's a resource book called Family Math that has alot oif quick activities.

[missd]

Our math night at school was designed around specific skills for each grade level and then tied into a theme. We had multiplication and division with the theme insects. Our make and take was edible insects. The instructions for making them were written including multiplication and division problems. (Add 4X3 legs, or 16 divided by 4 antennae) We used licorice strings, gumdrops, marshmellows, etc. The children also wrote their own instructions for imaginary insects using the math problems. I think we used 100 Hungry Ants as one of the read aloud stories. It was alot of fun seeing everyone's creations.

[luvmycat]

The book from the training that I took has great activities for both take home and do with your child right there. I have also used Nimble with Numbers for the evening. We also do illusion type tricks. One of my favorites is to cut an index card in a certain way, give it a twist and it looks like the card was not a rectangle.
I could look at the book tomorrow and be more specific if that would be timely enough.
An estimation jar is always a good way to start.
Graphing information with post it note about the families.

I am totally stuck on tangrams cause i wasnt in schol today cause i was sick HELP