Mathematics Resources for Teachers and Parents

This overview video presented by Dr. Lynda Colgan provides parents practical strategies and suggestions that can be done at home to enhance their child’s math education.

Inspiring Your Child to Learn and Love Math

The Parent Engagement tool-kit that Lynda Colgan and Research Assistant, Kim Betts, developed in collaboration with GAPC in Ottawa for the Council of Directors in Education (CODE) and The Ministry of Education is now available on the .

The tool-kit is comprised of four print, video and workshop modules directed at specific grade bands (Kindergarten, Primary, Junior and Intermediate) and one overview module, which is included below. The purpose of the tool-kit is to provide practical strategies and resources for parents to use at home to support their children’s positive math mindset and achievement.

A live-action math education television series on TVOKids, developed by Lynda Colgan, Director of the Community Outreach Centre, in collaboration with Executive Producer Hoda Elatawi, General Assembly Production Centre (Ottawa), the shows make numbers cool for kids with scenarios showing how math is used for everything from clubhouse renovations to cooking.

See .

A TVO website for students in grades 7 -10. It offers interactive tutorials, a glossary of terms and equations, listen and learn presentations, and an online scientific calculator. It also features free, real-time online tutoring, connecting students with certified Ontario teachers. The Ask a Tutor chat rooms are open Sunday to Thursday evenings.

See .

This resource is intended to be a starting point to help your class apply what they have learned in the Geometry and Spatial Sense strand to real-life situations. There are 10 pictures included, and each one has suggestions for the teacher regarding how to use each picture in a Grade One, Two, or Three classroom. The pictures will hopefully offer your students a way to engage themselves further in learning by applying their mathematical knowledge about shapes, polygons, and three-dimensional figures to a new situation – recognizing geometry when they see it in the real world.

See the teacher resource package for the primary grades (PDF 3.7 MB).

Making Math Magic at Home is a 124-page resource book that is filled with tips, tools, activities and games to make learning math a part of everyday life. Included in the book are instruction pages that teach how to make origami creations, do magic tricks with math, create coded pictures and message, learn math from the calendar and measure your body using the rule of thumb. There are games, puzzles and math-focused craft activities that are purposeful and fun to engage learners from Kindergarten to Grade 8.

See Making Math Magic at Home! (PDF 7.5 MB)

Math Placemats are one-page activity pages that are rich in puzzles, riddles, questions and simple visuals to engage children at the kitchen table, during long car rides or during indoor recess. They are great take-alongs to restaurants and events to occupy children in meaningful ways by practicing math content from all the strands: Number Sense, Geometry, Patterning, Data Management, Probability and Measurement while having fun. See:

Mathematical Melodies

Developed by the Community Outreach Centre, Mathematical Melodies (the songs, lyrics and lesson plans) help students understand the complex world of math in a fun, light-hearted and ‘fine tuned’ manner. Providing games, hands on activities, children’s literature connections and multi media resources to encourage children to construct relationships and ideas with mathematical content is our bonus to you.

Primary / Junior

Junior / Intermediate

Primary / Junior

Junior / Intermediate

Primary / Junior

Junior / Intermediate

Primary / Junior

Junior / Intermediate

Junior / Intermediate

Primary / Junior

Junior / Intermediate

Can You Believe THIS is Math?

Can You Believe THIS is Math? is a collection of 20 units that can be used to enrich, supplement and complement the elementary mathematics curriculum. Each unit is comprised of 5 hands-on activities that represent “the best of the best” of the curriculum resources that were developed by teacher candidates as part of the Connect-ME shared repository and Mathematics@Home family math calendar that Dr. Lynda Colgan coordinated and managed between 2000 and 2008. Special thanks to Adam Swanson (B.Ed. 2010) for his enormous effort in sifting through hundreds of web pages and organizing the best resources into units.