Helping your child to practice practical math skills throughout the year can lead to better retention at school. This weekly schedule provides a great starting point to practice skills including money, telling time, measurement, number sense, and problem solving.
Pull out your spare change jar to engage your children in understanding the value of money. Begin by asking them to sort the coins so they can practice naming the value of each one. Then, have them compare and order the values.
Next, give them a handful of mixed coins and ask them to add up the total value. For extra motivation, let your kids keep the money if they correctly add up the sum.
Once they have the basics down, play some money-based games such as the following (and remind your kids to wash their hands at the end of each activity.)
Kids can sound like a broken record asking, “Is it time for [insert any snack/meal/activity]?” Extra time at home presents a great opportunity to work on telling time on both a digital and an analog clock. With so much time on our hands, it makes perfect sense to work on the concept of elapsed time.
Help your children craft their schedules for the day including meals, schoolwork, activities, and bedtime. Encourage them to draw the start times for each activity on both an analog and a digital clock. Throughout the day, do a role reversal by frequently asking your children questions about time.
Your home is filled with measuring tools, such as rulers, measuring tapes, scales, measuring cups, thermometers, etc. Choose one of these tools as the day’s focus. Have a discussion with your children about whether that tool is used to measure length, weight, volume, or temperature. Then, send them off with a measuring task such as one of the following:
The idea of number sense encompasses all the skills above and others. An overall understanding of numbers and relationships allows your children to form a solid base on which they can continue to build future math skills.
Problem solving may sound like the most daunting skill to practice, but it requires the least amount of parent prep work. As adults, we problem solve every day. Simple examples include the following:
As you naturally come across such situations throughout the day, have your children help you answer these questions. Try to actively listen to their ideas and strategies more than steering the conversation toward the correct answer. Allowing them to think through the process and use trial and error to come to a conclusion will provide them the most benefit.
As you navigate the coming weeks of distance learning, remember that there is great value helping your children see the ways in which math is naturally integrated into everyday life. When your children can make these connections, they will stay engaged in math for years to come.