NAME ______________________________ DATE _______________

FAMILY LETTER

Related Activities to Try at Home

Dear Family,

The activities below are related to the mathematics in the multiplication and division unit How Many Packages and Groups?. You can use the activities to enrich your child's mathematical learning experience.

Everyday Multiplication and Division Situations Think about when you use multiplication and division in your everyday life and enlist your child's help in solving these problems. Here are some examples:

• • When you plan a family reunion for 45 people, you may need forks that come in packages of 8. How many packages do you need?

• • As the coach of the school soccer team, you need to order drinks. There are 18 children on the team and 12 games during the season. Each child has 1 drink at each game. How many drinks does the school need to buy for the season? Ask your child to explain the strategies used to solve such problems.

How Did You Solve That? Encourage your child to explain his or her strategies for multiplying and dividing numbers. Students will be encouraged to develop more than one way to solve a problem and to use methods that are based on understanding numbers and their relationships. Some of these methods may not be the ones you learned in school, but you may recognize some of them as methods you use in your daily life. One of the most important things you can do is to show genuine interest in the ways your child solves problems, even if they are different from your own.

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