Math + Summer = Prepared
Tips to practice math all season long
Math should be part of our everyday life and in summer it can be part of your children’s everyday fun. If you incorporate some of the following ideas, your children will be math students beyond the classroom. This will keep them building their math skills without realizing it and as an added bonus they will be preparing for a new school year.
“Math” your way through summer on a daily basis with your children using some of these example questions:
RELATE TO ELAPSED TIME
“How long do we have to spend at the beach, pool, park if we get there at 11:00 a.m. and need to leave by 2:45 p.m.?“
“If we want to have dinner at 6:00 p.m. , but it will take us about an hour plus 15 minutes to prepare it what time should we start?”
RELATE TO MONEY
“If it costs $55 to get in the theme park, and I want to have something to eat too, and sandwiches are $10, drinks are $5, cookies are $3, how much money should I plan to spend?”
“If I need $6, and only have quarters, how many do I need?”
“If it costs $6 for a quart of ice cream, how much for a pint?”
RELATE TO MEASUREMENT
“How many miles is it to the store, park, your friend’s house?”
“How far is a mile? Use something they can visualize.”
“If I want to double this recipe, let’s figure out how much I need of each item?”
FUN MATH GAMES WITH CARDS OR DICE
- Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division war with a deck of cards.
Decide which math operation to practice. Each player turns over 2 cards and the player whose sum, difference, product, or quotient is more wins the hand. Play until the deck is used up.
- Dice play with 2 or more depending on level of student. Keep paper record to tally up the 10 rolls each. Each player rolls and adds, or multiplies the dice to for a total for 10 different times. The one with the most points wins!
Simple activities that use math:
- Cook meals together
- Play board games that use money monopoly and life are 2 of my favorites
- Make a weekly estimation jar and help them estimate knowing the size of the jar and one of the items.
- Follow a sports team and look up their numbers and use percentages and averages, and explore fractions and percent.
- Make something together and use that time to talk about geometry.
There are many more ideas such as these to make your summer fun while sneaking in some math and before you know it they will start the year off ready for school!
