Books. Pencils. Paper. Calculator…..these are often the typical items we get out when preparing to do math. Do you ever feel that it’s just too much of the fundamentals of math, and not enough of the real-world experience? We are advocates of making math come alive, and a critical part of this is making it a daily part of our lives. Here are four fun and easy activities to put math applications into your real life, and draw connections to skills that you may be working on in school!
1. Cooking
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This is one of our favorite ways to work on fractions. (Plus a great family activity!) Pick a recipe from a website such as a great chocolate chip cookie recipe! Have your child double or triple the recipe by multiplying the fractions listed in the ingredients column. This also is a fabulous way to convert improper fractions to mixed numerals. (i.e. After tripling ½ cup to 3/2, your child can convert that to 1 ½ c.) By working with fractions this way, not only does it begin to have a real world application, but they pay-off of warm cookies fresh out of the oven is a hands-down winner!
2. Measuring
Area and perimeter are very abstract concepts for kids. Try getting out a tape measure and measuring the length of each wall in various rooms of your house. Sketch those rooms onto a piece of graphing paper, noting the length you’ve measured, and practice finding both the perimeter and the area of each room. Make this a multi-step problem by asking them to find the area of two rooms, where first they need to find the area of each, and then add together. Even up the skill level a bit more by removing sections of the area or perimeter for closet space or changes in where floor space may be (i.e. where a bathroom tub extends into the floor space) Who knows, maybe your child will be able to lay carpeting in your house one day, as a thank you!
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3. Sales Scouting
You know those sale flyers that come in the mail almost daily? Don’t toss them! They have a perfect math application. Work with your child on figuring how much a shirt or item of clothing would cost after the advertised discount. Make the multi-step problem even a bit more complex with having them add on sales tax to find the final cost. Using calculators here is ok, as you’re really teaching the understanding of the percentage, and how much money that represents. This is only if you already understand how fraction, decimal, and percent names are related and don’t have to depend on rote memory or the calculator to move the decimal point. Otherwise this gets in the way of your brain focusing on the question, because you can’t think of two things at once.
4. Weather Graphing
Here’s a fun way to get in some graphing and analyzing data: Have your child track and graph the weather over the course of a week, or even a couple of weeks. While there are many one-step problems that can be solved, (i.e. What was the highest temperature? What is the difference between the highest and the lowest temperature?) a more middle to advanced level skill would be to have your child average the temperatures of a given span of time (Add up temperatures then divide by the number of days tracked). Or have them find an “outlier”, a temperature that didn’t seem to fit in with the rest (we might get a few of those living in MN!) Not only are you demonstrating real-world application to these math skills, you are making abstract vocabulary become more common.
We hope you find these four points not only filled with math strategies, but also to be engaging and quality time spent with your family. Let us know of other fun things you’ve tried that increase the math sensibilities of your house!
--Mrs. B
Photo credit: JackF | Photos.com
