Let’s face it, very few children get excited to do math work out of school. And who can blame them? They need a break from work just as much as we do. But the fact is, math doesn’t just exist inside the four walls of a classroom or the pages of a workbook. Children need to be able to apply the math skills and knowledge that they have learned to the real world in order to solidify the concepts and avoid the academic slide. But don’t go rushing out to buy more workbooks or print more worksheets for the kids. There are many ways to work math into your everyday routine - the same way you sneak vegetables into their meals!
Here are five of my favorite ways to keep kids thinking mathematically each day:
Schedules. Children thrive on routines. They need to be able to anticipate how their day will unfold, even if it just means playing all day. Give your children some power over their schedules and routines by co-creating them together.
How much time is allotted for each activity?
How much time do you have to complete all of your chores? Can you get them all done in time?
How much longer until you can start something? By when do you need to finish?
How will you fit in your daily reading, chores, screentime, outdoor play, etc. before dinner?
Concepts covered: telling time, elapsed time, addition, subtraction, division
Allowance. Giving children an age appropriate allowance for doing chores is a great way to introduce your child to money management. Paying your younger children in cash will help them recognize different coin and bill combinations so they can practice counting money. Older children can be exposed to decimals depending on the amount you choose.
If your allowance is x dollars each week, how long will it take to save for that item?
If you buy that item, how much money will you have left in your bank account?
If you save all your allowance for a month how much will you have? What about after six months? A year?
Ask for different coin and bill combinations. Can you pay me all in quarters? What about dimes?
Concepts covered: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, decimals, skip counting by 5s, 10s, and 25s
Budgeting. Learning how to balance a budget is a life skill that all children should learn, and modeling how you use your budget is a perfect way to include children in this real life application.
Give your child your grocery list, the weekly circular or access to the store website, and a budget. How can you make sure that you can get all the items we need?
If the item is on sale, calculate the new cost.
Look at unit prices versus retail prices. Calculate the better value.
Have your younger children round up the prices and estimate how much the total will be. Older students can calculate the exact total.
When ordering takeout food, calculate the bill. Older students can include the appropriate tip percentage. Encourage them to find different ways to calculate 5%, 10%, and 20% of the total.
How will the state tax affect the bill? Estimate or figure out the exact figure.
Concepts covered: estimation, rounding, addition, subtraction, percentages, decimals
Travel. Most of us are traveling less than we’d like to currently, but having your children be a part of the conversation around travel (even if it’s just down the street) allows for great mathematical conversations.
Have your child figure out what time to leave to get to your destination on time. If we need to be there at x time, and it takes y minutes to get there, what time should we leave?
Calculate the total mileage for the trip.
Calculate the total time for the trip taking into account speed, pit stops, and traffic.
Calculate the amount of gas that will be needed for the trip. Have your child research the gas prices and calculate the estimated cost of the trip.
Concepts covered: time, elapsed time, rate, money, decimals, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication
Baking and Cooking. I don’t know about you, but at the start of this quarantine, I started baking ALL THE TIME. We made bread, cupcakes, cookies, muffins - all the baked goods. Baking is a phenomenal way to incorporate math.
Don’t just take the recipe as given. Look at how many people you want to feed and then plan on doubling, tripling, or halving the recipe as needed.
Remove some of the measuring tools from your cabinet. If you need ¾ cup of flour, but don’t have a ¾ cup, what are the other ways you can measure ¾ cup? Don’t have a ⅓ of a cup? How can you use tablespoons instead?
Grocery stores are out of a lot of ingredients! Look up substitutions if necessary. Some substitutions are a 1:1 ratio, but others have different ratios that will need to be calculated.
When cutting out cookies you can incorporate geometry! How can we get the most cookies out of this dough? Use flips, turns, and translations to fit the cookie cutter in the most efficient pattern.
Concepts covered: fractions, operations with fractions, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, spatial reasoning, geometry
Encouraging mathematical thinking with real world connections is a very powerful way to give children a purpose and context for the skills and concepts they learned in their classroom. But most importantly, it answers the essential question - when are we ever going to use this?