Using Family Routines to Improve Children’s Literacy and Math Skills and Parenting Practices

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Family routines are prime opportunities for parents to promote children’s literacy and math skills at home. In everyday activities such as reading a story, playing board games, or sharing a meal, children can develop key foundational skills that are needed for academic success. Given recent calls to incorporate literacy and math into what families are already doing, this symposium discusses the impacts of several parent-focused interventions designed to capitalize on family routines to promote children’s academic (math and literacy) skills. The first paper investigates the impacts of a parent-focused, video-based intervention promoting math conversations during family routines on preschoolers’ math skills, parental math talk, and home math activities. The second paper examines the impacts of a parent-focused, text-based intervention promoting the importance of engaging in five family activities (reading, playing, meal sharing, bedtime routines, and expressing affection) daily with 2 to 5-year-old children on the frequency of these activities and parenting confidence, chaos within the home, and children’s social/emotional behavior problems. The third paper investigates the impacts of a parent-focused, app-based intervention promoting literacy and math learning on preschool children’s literacy and math skills. The fourth paper examines the impacts of a parent-focused, game-based intervention promoting math and geometry on 5-to-7-year-old children’s math skills. Together, these four papers highlight the importance of embedding the promotion of academic development in the family’s everyday practices to ensure program uptake and sustainability.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chair

• Rebecca McGregor, University of Pittsburgh

Individual Presentations

• Math Intervention Focused on Family Routines Improves Parental Math Talk - Presenting Author: Rebecca McGregor, University of Pittsburgh; Diana Leyva, University of Pittsburgh; Melissa E Libertus, University of Pittsburgh

• Examining the need for and impact of a light-touch mobile technology intervention to promote positive parenting and school readiness in young children - Presenting Author: Lucy McGoron, Wayne State University; Hilary Horn Ratner; Kathryn A.G. Knoff; Steven J. Ondersma

• Learning apps at home prepare children for school - Presenting Author: Frank Niklas, LMU Munich; Astrid Wirth; Anna Mues; Efsun Birtwistle, LMU Munich

• Improving children’s mathematical skills using home-based games - Presenting Author: Akshita Srinivasan, Harvard University; Moira R. Dillon, New York University; Elizabeth S. Spelke, Harvard University