Schools

Event gives math a new flavor

By PAULETTE LASH RITCHIE, Times Correspondent
Published February 7, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT [Paulette Lash Ritchie | Times] Third-grader Jordan Ricci, 8, sorts and counts colored Goldfish during Edible Math Night at Westside Elementary School. The yearly event brings students and parents together to reinforce math skills.

SPRING HILL - Mathematics is delicious at Westside Elementary School, at least one night a year. They call it Edible Math Night.

Students and their families came back to school Tuesday for the fourth annual event that Title I parent educator Stacie Wharton said is "a nice way to show parents they can use things at home to teach math."

As children entered the cafeteria, they got bags so they could tote the goodies they would collect as they completed math tasks. Booty consisted of everything from Goldfish crackers to all manner of candy and treats - Tootsie Rolls, Reese's Pieces, M&Ms, and such.

The most popular stop was the Pizza Hut table. Students got plastic pizza sections to learn about halves, quarters and eighths. After the short lesson, they were rewarded with real pizza slices, donated by the Spring Hill Pizza Hut. They also got pizza coupons, pencils and crayons.

Many treats were multicolored and useful for sorting, graphing and estimating. Tootsie Rolls were used to measure an object's length.

At Kissable Coordinates, children graphed numbers, connected the dots to create a Hershey's Kiss drawing and went on to the next table with tiny bags of Kissables in their collections.

Reese's Pieces were used to measure the parts of a stickman, and pretzels were counted and multiplied. Students saw the difference between angles and curves using Twizzlers, and M&Ms helped them practice addition and subtraction.

At the Fraction War table, students picked numerators and denominators and were rewarded by having the larger number. At Hershey Bar Fractions, students raced each other to put blocks of the candy bars in the proper places to answer fraction questions.

Despite all the c treats filling the room, fourth-grader Thomisha Crapp, 9, had a simple reason for attending her second Edible Math Night: "Because I like math."

[Last modified February 6, 2008, 20:15:45]