Congratulations to the 2025 Play Contest winners!

227 Math Shelf classrooms played at over 100% in March. From these classes, we randomly selected 116 winners. Originally, we planned to select 75 winners!

Along with preparing students to be successful in academics, Math Shelf recognizes the importance of developing young children's sense of responsibility and capacity to provide care for living things.  Great early education teachers assign students many "care" roles within their classrooms like: watering class plants, feeding class pets, and serving classmates at snack time.   

When you visit early education classrooms you will likely see the delight on young children's faces when they have the responsibility to perform these "caring"acts.

At Math Shelf, we are always thinking of new ways to recognize students' effort and show off their math learning.  What better way to do this than a bulletin board.  But not just any bulletin board, an interactive bulletin board that changes each week based on how much math students learn. 

Introducing the Math Shelf Race Track Bulletin Board!  Watch this video for how to construct the Math Shelf bulletin board in your classroom.  Then, sign in to your Teacher Dashboard, click the Certificates link, and Download the bulletin board PDF.  This PDF has all the materials needed to put together your bulletin board, and also includes each student's Math Shelf level (updated weekly) so that you can move the cars on the Race Track at the end of the week. 

Today, every major news outlet in the United States reported on the largest math achievement declines in our nation's history.  Math Shelf can help turn around these dismal results by preparing preK, TK and Kindergarten students for future math success.  Read the headlines below, but more importantly consistently implement Math Shelf in your classroom to help your students recover from the pandemic's math learning loss. 

Watch this video about Math Shelf Hands-on Lessons

We love reading positive reviews about Math Shelf's instructional approach, high levels of student engagement, and wide variety of Montessori math activities and games.  Math Shelf also appreciates how reviewers praise our individualized learning approach, which is designed to maximize each student's math potential.  

But the most important thing that we have not read in reviewers' articles is that children that play Math Shelf learn 2 years of math in just six months.  Math Shelf is the only tablet math program, proven through three peer-reviewed published research studies, that eliminates early math achievement gaps.

Teachers can email parents Math Shelf Report Cards by visiting www.mathshelf.com/dashboard and selecting the Parents link.  Report cards measure children's math knowledge in the Fall, Winter & Spring for PreK and Kindergarten.

In 1907 Dr. Maria Montessori opened a preschool in Rome called Casa di Bambini.  It's 115 years later, and today there are over 20,000 Montessori schools worldwide.  Graduates of Montessori preschools have gone on to become leaders in technology, science, business, music, sports, and the arts.  They include: Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Paige, Stephen Curry, Joshua Bell, George Clooney, Taylor Swift, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Peter Drucker, Julia Child and many others. 

Measuring young children's math knowledge is critical for planning instruction, intervening early, and ensuring each student's future school success.  Math Shelf Data Reports measure children's usage, math learning growth, and math achievement.  Data REports are emailed to teachers and administrators weekly throughout the school year.   This blog post describes how to interpret Math Shelf Data Reports and use data consistently to improve children's math achievement.

Math Shelf Usage
In order to learn math, students need consistent opportunities to practice.  Having usage goals helps teachers and administrators keep track that every student is playing Math Shelf consistently. Our recommended usage is that, "70% of students play Math Shelf twice a week for 10 minutes each session."  The chart below in your data reports measures Math Shelf usage.