How to Help Your Child Enjoy Math

In all of my years of teaching, I’ve heard many students say that  they don’t like math. They wonder why they need to learn certain  concepts and insist that they’ll never have to use the skills that we  cover during the school year.

Part of the reason they feel this way is because they only think math  is a series of problems on a worksheet and don’t yet see how math is  all around us in everyday life. This is one of the reasons that we must  make math fun for students, especially during the summer months when  they’ll be out of the classroom.

How to make math fun during the summer

As summer approaches and we all gladly welcome the warm weather and  extra free time, we also need to be aware of the risk of our children  experiencing “summer slide.” A study by researchers at the University of Missouri showed that on average, students lose about 2.6 months of math learning  during the summer break. This learning loss can have lasting effects,  including lower test scores, lower self-confidence, and lower high  school and college success. Many teachers spend three to six weeks  reteaching concepts taught during the previous spring. The good news is  that there are several fun ways to keep your child’s math skills sharp  over the summer.

Spend time cooking. Following a recipe is a fun way  to reinforce skills like measurement, fractions, and proportions. As  your child becomes more proficient in following the recipe, you can add a  challenge by doubling, tripling, or halving the portions which will  strengthen multiplication and division skills.

Go shopping. Spending time in a grocery store offers  many mathematical opportunities. Calculating the unit price of a bottle  of juice in a six-pack or determining the better bargain between two  brands involve estimation as well as division skills. When using  coupons, have your child determine the amount of money or percentage of  the total cost saved by examining the receipt.

Create a restaurant at home. Give your child a  variety of coins and “charge” him for the meal to review the coins’  values, reinforce number sense, and practice skip counting. After he  finds the correct amount, ask him to create three more combinations of  coins that equal the same amount. Then have him pay with bills and ask  how much change is expected back.

More creative ways of making math fun in the summer

Watch sports and find the math. Sports offer a multitude of math practice opportunities. Follow a specific player’s stats over the  course of the season. Compare one swimmer’s time to another’s to  practice subtracting decimals and understanding place value. Calculate  the percentage of shots made in a basketball game. Older children might  even create a scale drawing of their backyard basketball court or  compare the measurements to an official-sized court.

Start a business. Whether it’s  babysitting, mowing lawns, or setting up a lemonade stand, children can  learn the value of start-up costs, profit and loss, and saving their  earnings for a future purchase.

Do math around the house. Something as simple as  hanging a few pictures involves measurement and spatial thinking. Anyone  who’s ever miscalculated the center of the wall and covered up a few  nail holes knows the importance of correctly finding the center of the  wall before starting. A more elaborate construction project involves  using angles when designing the space, finding the area of the room to  be carpeted, or problem-solving during the construction process.

Take a road trip. Planning the route of a family  vacation (whether using a paper map or an app) will reinforce map  reading skills, measurement, identifying coordinates, and creating a  scale drawing. Have your child calculate the distance between two  cities. Ask her how that compares to the distance between two other  cities? She can also practice converting between metric and standard  units of measurement by examining the map’s key.

Plant a garden. When planning the space to be used  for planting, children practice calculating the area. Creating the rows  of plants in arrays reinforces multiplication facts. Children with more  advanced math skills can even determine the number of cubic yards of  soil needed to be purchased by calculating the volume of the space.

Analyze the weather. Weather forecasts are filled with math. Practice subtraction skills by comparing the high  and low temperatures for each day. Learn about averages by calculating  the mean, median, and mode temperatures for the week. Review percents by  determining how often the forecaster correctly predicts the weather!

Math is all around us each day. In order for children to keep the  skills they’ve learned throughout the year, they need to practice them  often. But most importantly, it needs to be fun or they won’t want to do  it. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can even sneak the math in without  your kids even noticing!

Applying math to everyday life can make math fun, useful Hands-on, real-world examples are the best ways to get kids involved. In my class this year, we reviewed the  concept of surface area by wrapping empty gift boxes before winter  break. Students began by estimating which boxes would have the greatest  or least surface area. Then they used the grid lines on the back of the  wrapping paper to determine the area while comparing the measurements  with a ruler. The math conversations that took place were proof that  they understood the concepts, and by the end of the lesson we had a  festive classroom! Whether it’s sports, cooking, or going on a vacation, the key to  helping your child enjoy math is capitalizing on his interests. If he’s  spending time doing something he enjoys and honing his math skills in  the process, that’s a win. For those children who will most likely have  extra screen time when the school year ends, there are many free math  game apps and websites available to hold their interest. The most  important thing to remember is to keep it fun! Nicole Matoian is a middle school teacher at New Morning School in Plymouth, MI.  She can be reached by nicolem@newmorningschool.com.

In my class this year, we reviewed the concept of surface area by wrapping empty gift boxes before winter break.