How to Turn Everyday Activities into Math Learning Opportunities
written by: Krystof-Sandor Harfst
Table of Content
Making your kids expert mathematicians involves more than schoolwork. With the homeschool statistics increasing since the 2021- 2022 school year, it reflects how crucial parent-led teaching can be to kids’ math learning. Parents and tutors must ensure that kids study math continuously by incorporating it into their everyday activities. This article covers how to improve child's math skills by using every activity as an opportunity to learn.
How to teach children math through everyday activities
There are several ways you can incorporate math into everyday activities to make your kids learn. Find out below.
Grocery store mathematic
A simple task like shopping can be stressful when you go to the grocery store with your kids. Amidst the cries of "Can I take this?" you can incorporate math to make the task more bearable and impactful for your kids.
Shopping is a tremendous opportunity to build math skills for your kids— they will learn cost estimation, budgeting, and decision-making. It allows kids to practice counting, pricing, and measuring objects. Permit your kids to think through the pros and cons of several options and compare their prices. Also, kids will learn to save for a particular object. It is essential to teach your kids what budget means and why it is crucial.
Traveling
Vacations, whether by car, plane, or boat, are great for escaping the stresses of everyday life, but they also present some exciting chances to help your kids with math.
While traveling, you can try games like License Plate Math, where you and your kids take on the role of spies deciphering codes and converting letters into numbers. Additionally, if you are thinking of how to help your child with math, show them how to determine distances on maps, the cost of petrol, and how to budget for their meals.
Learning while cooking
After a busy day cooking or carrying out tasks, you may be too tired to help kids with math. To solve this challenge, you can let them join you in your activities. For instance, you can have them in the kitchen as you make meals.
Involving your child in household chores, like cooking, provides an additional set of hands and an opportunity for them to learn math daily. Regardless of your kid's age, the kitchen is a practical classroom where you can teach them basic math skills like measurement, sequencing, estimation, and multiplication.
While cooking with your kids, they can learn measurements and patterns by watching you use the right ingredients. Importantly, explain the measurements, the process of making the meal, and how it relates to mathematics.
Teaching through conversation
Parents hear comments like "I want one of those" or "I want the bigger half" all the time. You can use these statements to start conversations that will boost math skills for kids.
Have your kids tell you why the one half is bigger and the difference between the two halves. Also, tell them your budget for the day; that way, they can decide which item to forego.
Take advantage of any chance to educate your kids about money management, including budgeting, rounding to the next dollar, and sales taxes. Contrary to what you might think, teaching kids about fractions, equal halves, and division with and without remainders in a practical way is always fun.
Running errands
Most everyday tasks, like cleaning, running errands, and carpooling, provide opportunities for teaching baby math. Your children can enhance their math skills by participating in a carpool. They can also practice time, fractions, estimation— by comparing the time it takes to pick up and transport each child to driving alone, and cost division (gas).
Additionally, as you're putting things away in the house, it's an excellent opportunity to bring up the idea of estimating. So, your kids can make educated guesses about the number of toys on the bed, the time required to fold and put away all the clothes, or the time necessary to remove the sheets.
Setting a timer for your kids to see who can stay ahead of it is another excellent way to have children learn about time from experience.
Learning about debt and finance
One way to bolster the math skills for kids is by teaching them about things related to money, like credit and interest rates. As far as your comfort and finances are concerned, you can speak generally about these subjects or share details about your own life. One example would be the amount of money you spend in interest each month on a mortgage or credit card balance.
Finance offers numerous opportunities for instruction. A few things you may teach your child about money are the concept of debt and how it relates to borrowing and sharing and the meaning and calculation of interest. You can enhance your child's understanding of these concepts by utilizing toys or sweets as examples of things to lend or borrow.
Furthermore, you can teach your kids what inflation means and how it happens. Teaching your kids these concepts enhances their critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. Also, it sets them up to become math experts.
Math in Religious Practice
Through religious practice, you can teach your kids basic math skills like reading time and counting. If you are a Muslim, you can teach your kids the five prayer times in a day and what they signify. That way, you can tell them to calculate the time from one prayer time to the next.
If you are a Christian, you can incorporate math into Bible studies. There is a lot of mathematical information in the Bible, from the seven days of creation to the animals entering the ark in pairs, from the numerous references in the book of Numbers to a timeline of Adam's descendants, and even to a scale model of Noah's ark.
Conclusion
Regardless of the math curriculum, you can incorporate mathematics into your kid's daily tasks to make learning easier. Have your kids join you as you carry out tasks; that way, they can observe, listen, and learn. Take advantage of every opportunity to make your kids math experts.
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