Keeping Their Math Skills Sharp

Summertime may mean a break from school, but it doesn't need to be a break from learning too!  Use your everyday activities to reinforce math concepts.  Here are some ideas.

In the Kitchen.  Find a recipe with lots of fractions and double or halve it.  Operations involving fractions are often tricky for kids to grasp, applying that to a real world skill such as cooking can be helpful – and have tasty results!

At the Store. Play the estimation game, round the prices of the items you buy to the nearest fifty cents and estimate how much your total bill will be.  Keep track on a piece of paper or for an extra challenge keep track in your head.  Give your littlest kids a copy of the sales flyer and have them choose a number and see how many times they can find that number in the ad.  At home when you're writing out your list, let your kids look through the sales flyer and make a list of what they would buy if they had $10 to spend. 

On the Road. Older kids can calculate gas mileage.  Younger kids can practice their subtraction skills by figuring out how many miles you have left to drive or how many hours are left in your trip.  When preparing for your road trip, give your kids a map and see if they can figure out how many miles you will need to drive, or how many states you will pass through.

What are your ideas?

Look for articles in the coming weeks with ideas for keeping your kids reading and writing this summer
Photos by pontuse and tempophage