Math Nights planned for SeDoMoCha pre-K families

By Stuart Hedstrom 
Staff Writer

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — In recent years students and family members of the pre-kindergarten program at SeDoMoCha Elementary School have been able to take part in an evening of activities designed to promote literacy. Later this month a similar program will be offered, with the focus of the session based on math.

    “On the 24th and 26th we’re doing a Math Night for our pre-K families,” teacher Ellen McBride said, with students and families attending one of the programs scheduled for 5:30-6:30 p.m. each evening at SeDoMoCha. “We are basically covering four concepts — shapes, colors, counting and measurements.
    “Our focus is to inform parents and let them know why these concepts are important, and for them to have fun as a family.”
    McBride said the Math Night will use a series of books written and illustrated by Ellen Stoll Walsh, in which mice help teach math concepts. In “Mouse Shapes” the animals use shapes to build hiding places from a cat, and in “Mouse Count” the mice see how many of them can fit in a jar to get away from a snake as the children count along with the text.
    The Math Night will vary from the literacy evenings, which have been held in the spring the previous two school years, as families will have four stations based around one of Stoll Walsh’s books. “We are going to have an introduction where we explain why we are doing it and why it is important, then we are basically giving it over to the families,” McBride said.
    She said the stations will include a jar of toy mice for cats to be counted, another where students and families create their own mice out of an assortment of shapes, a table where they learn about weights through balance and another called “mouse paint, where they mix water colors like the mice do in the book.”
    Those attending the Sept. 24 and 26 evenings will be able to enjoy a snack of crackers and cheese, and “we will do a drawing for all those that attend,” McBride said.
    “This is the first time we are doing a Math Night,” she said, mentioning she is already expecting about 70 attendees between the two evenings.
    McBride said a Literacy Evening for this year’s pre-K program — which currently has an enrollment of 44 students between a pair of morning sessions and another two afternoon classes — is being planned for the spring. She said the theme will be similar to 2013’s “Monkey Mayhem Family Literacy Night”, with the activities teaching the importance of reading based around the primates.