Don’t attempt to interview or test people before the sessions start. Both of these were barriers to participation in this study.
Parents know the interests of their own children, and know which of the activities you offer are most likely to appeal to their families. Furthermore, the math experiences parents have from home, work, leisure activities, and community life inspire them in working with their kids, and provide a rich source of experience and example. Better the activity that comes from the parent’s work than from the facilitator’s text book.
It can’t be repeated too often. It is important the activities be enjoyable for parents too. For example, if parents enjoy nature, or make it part of their spiritual or family life to be out of doors, then they are more likely to incorporate math thinking into hiking or camping, which they already do, than to take up some other new activity for the sake of doing math.
Given the factors in parents’ life that make regular attendance the exception, not the norm, activities should fit into one session, and not carry over to the next. Parents should not have to have attended the previous session in order to enjoy the current one, and they should be able to go home at the end of every session with something to do with their children, not wait until the next session to finish things up.
Activities should not look like the kinds of school math that parents may remember. This will avoid emotional carry-overs and past memories, but also give the parents a chance to start fresh, with more confidence that they can work with their kids on these activities, even if they have given up on helping their kids with homework or worksheets.
As a first principle, activities should appeal to and develop the spiritual, emotional, physical and mental parts of our beings. The introduction to Family Math Fun! expands on this first principle: