The Minnesota Children's Museum, in collaboration with the American Library Association will develop a project to engage children ages two through seven years old and their parents in exploring mathematics through hands-on, book-based math activities in libraries and children's museums across the country. The main elements of the project are: 1. A 1200 square foot exhibit at the Minnesota Children's Museum; 2. A traveling exhibit to ten children's museums over a six month period; 3. Five smaller versions of the exhibit will travel to 75 libraries sponsored by the American Library Association. Each library that apply for the exhibit must present a plan in which 50 percent of their exhibit audience will be children and families of the under-represented, lower income groups, and racial and/or ethnic groups. 4. Programs and materials will be designed to provide parents with the means to actively participate in their children's math education. The collaboration of the Minnesota Children's Museum and the American Library Association draws together two organizations whose natural constituencies are parents with young children. Project 1,2,3 is designed to be national in scope and creates multiple formats within which families can enjoy exploring math. Its goals and objectives reflect four messages: start early, math is everywhere, parental involvement and get into books. The project Principal Investigator (PI) Ms. Jeanne W. Vergeront received her Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Science in Child and Family Studies and Environmental Design, respectively from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Currently, she serves as the Vice President, Educational Projects at the Minnesota Children's Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Mother Goose Asks Why? is a program of the Vermont Center for the Book currently being brought to 1200 parents in Vermont. Centered around exemplary children's literature and science activities, the program provides a series of four reading/discussion/activity sessions to parents of preschool children. Through exploration of basic questions such as "What Is It?", "How Many?", and "How Do You Know?", parents gain experience, skills, and confidence to introduce science to their 3-7 year old children. The Vermont Center hopes to expand this program to twelve additional states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Before initiating this expansion, however, the Center needs to address two issues: 1) how to create appropriate strategies for reaching, recruiting, and retaining families in locations that are quite different from Vermont, and 2) how to create an evaluation strategy that will assess parental behavior and attitudinal changes over time. Toward this end, the Center will gather representatives from the participating expansion sites and experts in family outreach to examine local issues and differences, to establish local contacts, and to begin development of effective implementation strategies for the sites. They also will work with The Network, Inc., a national education evaluation and research organization, to produce concrete measurements for parental behavior changes.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Sally AndersonJoan NagyGregory DeFrancis
The Vermont Center for the Book currently reaches over 1,000 parents in Vermont through the informal science education program, Mother Goose Asks "Why?." Through the program, exemplary children's literature and related science activities are brought to parents of preschool children in a series of four reading/discussion/activity sessions. Participants explore such questions as "What Is It?", "How Many", "How Do You Do It?", and "How Does It Grow?" and gain the expertise and confidence to introduce science to their 3-7 year old children. Many of the parents involved are reached through programs such as Head Start, Adult Basic Education, and Parent Centers. In this current project, the Vermont Center for the Book with make the program available to parents in 12 other states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands by equipping their state libraries and state centers for the book to conduct the program in local libraries and library service outreach sites in housing projects, on Native American reservations and in prisons. The Vermont Center will train library professionals in the content and process of the program and provide technical support as the new sites begin implementation of the program. At the same time, the Vermont Center will create another program, "You Can Count on Mother Goose," that will be based in books and activities through which parents can introduce their preschool children to basic mathematics ideas. Once created and field-tested, this new program will be disseminated to all of the participating sites.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Sally AndersonJoan NagyGregory DeFrancis
Nebraskans for Public Television is developing the math strand in Reading Rainbow. Under this grant, the project will "re-purpose" 30 existing Reading Rainbow program for use in mathematics learning, produce two new math-focused programs, and institute a comprehensive outreach campaign. Books currently being considered for the new programs are Mama Bear, which looks at money and its uses and examines some simple economics; and Echoes for the Eye which explores patterns in nature. The outreach will solicit and involve families served by the National Urban League; recruit school and community-based children's librarians in the math-based literature effort; and expand the local public broadcasting outreach efforts related to the math focus of the series from the eight model stations in the previous year to all interested public television stations. The target will be to involve at least 75 stations in substantive outreach to families and schools. The project also will develop and disseminate a new print piece modeled after the very successful Math is Everywhere Reading Rainbow Teachers Guide which has been used by over 3,000 teachers. Twila Liggett will continue as Executive Producer and Project Manager and LeVar Burton will remain as host and Co-Executive Producer. Cecily and Larry Truett will be Supervising Producer and Producer/Director respectively. Advisors include Herbert Ginsburg from Teachers College, Columbia University; Lucille Mahon, Math Coordinator, NYC Community School District 2; Solomon Garfunkel, Executive Director, COMAP, Inc.; and Judith Jacobs, Director of the Center for Education and Equity in Mathematics, Science, and Technology at California State Polytechnic University.