Mathtubs

Give me a mathtub each morning,
Give me a mathtub at noo-oo-oon,
Give me a mathtub each evening,
But give me a mathtub soon.

One of the little perks of my job is distributing the mathtubs each Friday. {See the link below for more info about these tubs--they're boxes filled with math games, math materials, suggestions for math-related projects, and picture/storybooks with math connections; kids take them home for a few days at some point during the year.}

I walk into a classroom, around about the time pizza is delivered, carrying one or two tubs, and deliver the tubs to the children (CHOSEN AT RANDOM--NOTHING UP MY SLEEVES) who will get them for the next few days.

Children vary, of course, in how they express their excitement over getting the tub (from a small, self-satisfied smile up to an enthusiastic fist-pump and a chanted "Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah"), but about 97% are very pleased to have their turn. It's quite gratifying.

The other children, meanwhile, are full of helpful comments such as "Is it my turn yet?" "When is it my turn?" "She's so LUCKY," and so on. For the moment, at least, the arrival of the Math Guy and the Math Materials outranks everything--even pizza. No small feat.



I thought I had invented the mathtub idea, or at the very least, um, repurposed it from a similar idea I'd read about somewhere in which teachers sent books home in backpacks for kids and families to enjoy. A couple of years into the mathtub project, though I was cleaning out some old papers and discovered to my surprise that in 1997, while at a conference in Rochester (NY), I had actually attended a workshop in which the presenter was describing how teachers could package up some math materials for use at home. I still take credit for the name "mathtubs"--I think that teacher used shopping bags or something similar--but as for the concept, well, I should know by now that there are few truly original ideas in education. Hey, it works, and the kids enjoy it, and that's what counts--right?

You can read more about mathtubs here, in an article I published in a teacher magazine a few years back:

http://www.highlightsteachers.com/archives/articles/the_mathtubs_are_coming_by_stephen_currie.html