Recipe for Success: Capitalizing on Family Food Routines to Develop Latino Children’s Math Skills

• In Event: 1-189 - Innovative Approaches at Home and School to Improve Children’s Early Math Skills

Integrative Statement

Children from low-income households enter school with lower levels of early math skills than their peers from middle-income households, and this gap tends to increase during the school years (Aunola et al., 2004; Jordan et al., 2009). Prior research, although limited, suggests that teaching low-income parents ways to support math skills at home can have beneficial effects for children’s math performance (Starkey & Klein, 2000). The goal of the study was to evaluate the feasibility of “Food For Thought” (FFT), a parent-focused intervention that capitalizes on family food routines (e.g., grocery shopping, cooking, eating out) to enhance kindergarteners’ math skills. Specifically, we examined whether there was an association between FFT attendance and children’s math outcomes. FFT involves four 90-min family meetings (one per week) taking place in the schools. Parents watched videos and learned ways to support math development while engaging in daily food routines (e.g., writing and reading numerals while grocery shopping, counting food items while cooking, matching numerals with food items while reading a recipe, using coins while grocery shopping). The FFT program focused on Latino communities because prior research indicates that Latino parents are more likely to support children’s cognitive development during activities resembling food routines (e.g., playing with toy food) than other activities (e.g., playing with blocks) (Eisenberg, 2002; Tenenbaum & Leaper, 1997).

Participants were 68 Latino kindergarteners (M age = 71 months) and their low-income parents recruited from 3 public elementary schools in a southeast city in the U.S. All parents were born outside the U.S. and 49% came from Mexico. Children’s math skills were assessed at pre-test and post-test (after program completion; 5 weeks later) using 3 tasks: numeral recognition, cardinality understanding, and counting (adapted from Lipton & Spelke, 2006; TEMA-3, Ginsburg & Baroody, 2003). A composite measure (sum of z scores in all three tasks) was used in analyses. Parents completed a demographic questionnaire about household income and home literacy practices. Records of FFT attendance were kept.

Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions yielded no significant main effect of program attendance, but a significant interaction between program attendance and child’s initial math skills (Table 1). Children with lower initial math skills (those in the bottom quartile) whose parents attended more FFT meetings had more advanced math outcomes at post-test than children with lower initial math skills whose parents attended fewer FFT meetings (Figure 1). These associations were present even after accounting for the effects of household income and home literacy practices. The study highlights the potential for involving low-income Latino parents in intervention programs aiming to support kindergarteners’ math abilities and the need to capitalize on practices that are already established and valued by Latino families (Kerman & Janes, 1999). Future research should test the effectiveness of this new program using a randomized controlled trial design.

Authors

• Diana Leyva, Davidson College
  Presenting Author

• Anna Davis, University of Virginia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lauren Skorb, Georgia Tech
  Non-Presenting Author