Why it’s a good idea to sneak math into your child’s day
Have you ever wondered if your child is stupid?
Why doesn’t he get what you’re teaching?
My little boy used to put up a scene and refuse to work with me as soon as I said the word “homework”. He had decided he hated “homework”. Not necessarily the work itself, but the knowledge that it, in fact, was “homework”. He still fights me, so that’s why I had to be creative and come up with a different way to teach. I started trying to incorporate learning into our daily chores and activities. Below I’ll tell you how you can sneak math into your child’s day, without him even noticing! He’ll just have fun doing it!
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11 ways to sneak math into your child’s day
1. Baking
I’ll start with my favorite; baking. Kids love baking, and so do I! There are different things you can learn while baking. If your children are younger you can teach them to read the recipe, count and measure using cups, tablespoons, teaspoons etc.
For an older child it might be appropriate to double or triple a recipe in order to practice fraction addition/multiplication (1 1/4 cup x 3).
If you’re anything like me you’re going to want to “do it for them” or help too much. Try to stop yourself. Don’t worry about the mess -they’ll clean up after themselves. Just make sure they don’t get burnt or hurt themselves in any way. You’ll probably want to take care of anything that has to do with the oven.
2. Measuring
My kids, especially my boy, love to measure things. Having him help you measure things around the house is yet another way to sneak math into your child’s day. Do you need to measure the floor to buy a new mat? Ask the kids to measure. Getting new curtains? Have the kids measure the window. Maybe they can also build something easy by themselves. My youngest absolutely LOVE building with cardboard boxes. He made several houses for our kitten to sleep in. These are things he’s been doing on his own, without any parental involvement. Sometimes he measures, sometimes not 🙂
3. Weighing things
Preparing and weighing packages for shipment is our kids’ specialty! Kids love to play with the scale. They especially love to weigh themselves. Anyhow, this way they can get a feel for what things weigh. Which is heavier? Which is lighter? Heavier than…etc
4. Reading the clock
Try to constantly ask your child what time it is, starting at a young age. Before they actually know how to read the clock they will probably answer you something like “the long hand is at 6 and the short hand is between 7 and 8…” But that’s ok, they’ll learn.
I know it’s sometimes much easier just to check the time yourself, but please don’t. This way the kids will learn to read the clock much faster.
5. Budgeting
A very good example on how to sneak math into your child’s day is to help them plan their own budget. This is something I yet have to work on.
But let’s say you give them an allowance; let them count how much they have (my kids count their money all the time) and help them figure out what they can buy, or how much more they need in order to buy something specific. I believe it’s a good idea to encourage them to save for something bigger that they can appreciate more. But they are all different –my oldest will save while my number two will waste all her money immediately or simply give it away (yes, I’m a little worried about her future..)
6. Paying at the store
This is an excellent practice counting money. I don’t always let my kids pay at the store, because (between us) it can easily turn into evil stares from people in the looong line behind you. But if they’re buying something with their own money I will always let the kids pay by themselves.
7. Timing things
To help them understand the concept of elapsed time, you can ask your child to time how long it takes to perform different tasks: to drive from y to z, to get the mail, to run around the house, to brush teeth…you get it. If your children are a bit competitive they might compete against each other. Added bonus: My sister told me that when she wanted her boys to hurry up she used to say to them “I’ll time you”. Then they would do anything really quickly just to “win”.
8. Yahtzee
Please tell me you played Yahtzee before… I used to play it a lot while growing up. Yahtzee is one of those games I actually ENJOY playing with my kids. It’s not too complicated, but still enough to make you think a little. You take turns rolling 5 dice and try to get different number combinations. It’s a fairly inexpensive game, which you can find on Amazon.
The math part comes in a few different ways: number recognition, counting and addition, especially when you have to add the scores.
9. Cooking
Cooking is similar to baking of course, but still worth mentioning. Most likely you’ll cook more often than bake, so you might be able to sneak math into your child’s day more often. Added bonus with cooking is that children are more likely to eat what they have cooked themselves 🙂
10. Pick Up Sticks
(Also called Mikado, Jackstraws or Spillikins) Have you tried to play this game lately? It’s actually quite entertaining. I find it confusing adding the scores at the end, but you can just make up your own rules. Maybe use whatever numbers you’re practicing on: every streak of blue is worth 2 points, red 3 or every stick with 3 streaks is worth 10, 2 streaks 15 and the blue stick 30.. Whatever you decide, write it down so your kids can add it up at the end.
11. Card games
There are many different and entertaining options when it comes to card games. Using a simple deck of cards you can sneak a lot of math into your child’s day!
A couple of games you can play are:
Spiral math game
Mix the cards and put them in a spiral pattern on the floor. Place the players on the first card from the inside and take turns rolling a dice. You add (or multiply, depending what you need to practice on) the number on the dice to the number of the card your standing on. If you know the correct answer, you get to move the number your dice shows. First out of the spiral wins.
21
A well known, popular game with two players. Each player gets 2 cards, which they hide from the other player. The goal is to come as close to 21 as possible. If you go over, you automatically loose.
War
A popular card game, used to practice math. Ms Brain has a couple of great versions of this, so I’m just going to leave it to her to explain.
I really hope these ideas will inspire you to sneak math into your child’s day and that you’ll have fun while doing it.
I’m sure you can think of other activities to incorporate math that I missed.
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How do YOU sneak math into your child’s day?
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