By
Caroline MukisaRecent research shows that students math skills are more likely to drop over the summer vacation than their reading skills. Some students will return to school 3 months behind in their math skills. Here are some fun and easy ways to make sure your child avoids the summer math slide.
1. Math stories - Check the children's science section of your local bookstore for math themed stories. Stories about counting and arithmetic, all the way through to Pythagoras' Theorem can make summer math learning an interesting adventure.
2. Games - Buy a fun math board game or make your own math games using playing cards or dice. There are also plenty of free online math games to keep your child entertained.
3. Watch a video - You Tube has lots of math related videos. Search for math raps or math doodles. For a more formal math learning experience, there are also plenty of topic based videos to learn from, which can be used to review work from the previous year or to preview the upcoming topics.
4. Visit a museum - Find out about the summer math programs taking place at your local science museum, or just browse around and highlight the different ways math is involved in the various sciences.
5. Play a travel game - Use those long car journeys to practise some road sign arithmetic, gas price rounding or number plate math with your captive audience.
6. Get practical - Point out the math in the activities your child already loves doing. Sewing and fort building both involve geometry.
7. Bake - Younger children can practise number recognition and counting while your older ones can scale up or scale down recipes, for a tasty mathematical treat!
8. Plan a trip - Grab a map and help your child to investigate journey distances and travel times to make sure your family arrives at that important summer destination in plenty of time!
9. Watch sport - Choose your child's favorite, sport, whether it's football, basketball, cricket or hockey. All sports are full of statistics. Find a piece of paper and a pencil and see if you and your child can calculate along with the experts.
10. Set up a Lemonade Stand - Help your child to set up and run a drinks stand. They'll be boosting their mathematical skills through ingredient measuring and money management.
Trying one or two of these activities each week in the summer vacation will ensure your child returns to school ready to tackle the new math skills for the year ahead with confidence.
Join Caroline Mukisa at
Maths Insider where she offers quick tips and practical advice to help you guide your child to maths success and grab a copy of her free eBook, "Yes! You Can Be Your Child's Maths Tutor!"
Caroline also offers the
31 Days to Faster Times Tables program to help you guide your child to faster, more confident times tables. A great summer math project!
