Opportunities to Keep Math Skills Fresh during Summer Fun

  

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This time of year, parents are asking me what they can do to help their children maintain skills over the summer. While most parents do not want to subject their kids to hour after hour of math drills during their break, many do want their students to continue to practice their skills throughout the summer months. We all know that math is all around us, but parents often have to make math more explicit to ensure their students recognize how they use math outside the classroom. Depending on the student’s level, parents can play counting games with kids, look for shapes in nature, or help children work with money during a vacation.

Recently, I came across this website from Education World that provides several ideas to help students engage with math activities throughout the summer. This site provides a plethora of activities arranged in several categories:

• Planting a Math Garden: Includes activities to help students see how math is used in their every day lives.
• Math Bedtime Stories: Read these mathematical tales to your little ones!
• Math and Sports: Browse through several links to help students see how math is embedded in sports.
• Math in Games: Kids love playing games, so it’s great to use game time to practice math skills.
• Math and TV: Make their TV watching worthwhile by including fun math-related activities.
• Math + Computers = A Great Equation: On those rainy days, provide kids with this list of links which include games and activities to help them practice their math skills.
• Math at Home, around Town, and in Nature: Don’t leave the house without helping kids see how math is all around us.
• Shopping: Especially suited for older students, estimation and money-related activities are easy to incorporate while shopping.
• Math Travels: Utilize spare time during trips to help students see how math is used when planning and paying for a vacation.
• Eating, Sleeping, and Growing: These extra activities may fill up other spare time kids have during the summer!

Summer break is a time for kids to relax and have fun. I don’t believe that students should spend all of this time crunching numbers. However, as this site shows, there are plenty of opportunities to help students appreciate math and have a little fun while they’re doing it!