We hope you’re having an amazing summer! Summer is a great, highly anticipated season, filled with sunshine, warm weather, fun activities & programs, daytrips, and vacations. Kids find summers especially fun because it gives them a break from the school, homework, studying, and tests.
While your children are enjoying their break from the pressures of school, there are still fun ways to help them keep their math skills sharp over the summer. On average, students lose about 2.6 months of learning in math over the summer, and this learning loss is cumulative. This summer learning loss is called the summer slide. It can have a serious impact on a child’s math learning and also their self-confidence, especially if they are already struggling or behind in math.
The positive news is that it’s not difficult to keep math learning ongoing over the summer, while also still making memories together and having fun as a family… so fun in fact, that your kids may not even realize that they are ‘doing’ and learning math.
8 Fun Ways to Help Keep Math Skills Sharp Over the Summer:
- Play games. In addition to being a great way to spend time together, games can improve your child’s numerical fluency, logic, and probability skills. They are a fun way to flex math muscles and work with numbers and patterns. Our favourites include Monopoly, Scrabble, Chess, Blokus, Set, Battleship, Uno, Qwirkle, Connect Four, Dominoes, Tic Tac Toe, Sudoku, Rummikub, Suspend and Memory.
- Listen to music. Did you now that music is inherently mathematical? It’s true. The familiar patterns in songs actually follow a mathematical structure. In addition to listening to the radio and steaming music at home, at the cottage or in the car, also check out some local musical events or free summer concerts, like the Newmarket Music Series.
- Cook & bake. Whether you’re using your all-time favourite recipe or trying out a new one, following a recipe uses concepts like counting and sequencing. Baking (and some cooking recipes too) requires precise measuring. And if you’re looking to double that batch of mouthwatering double chocolate chip cookies, scaling a recipe helps teach multiplication or division.
- Shop together. Shopping at the local farmers’ market, grocery store, or retail store is a great way for your child to learn math and practice their math skills. They can compare prices, calculate discounts, savings, and unit prices, and give their computation skills a good workout.
- Start a summer business. In addition to earning some extra spending money, starting a summer business (cutting grass, doing yard work, babysitting, washing cars, walking dogs/caring for pets, etc.) helps teach kids basic accounting skills, and how to calculate expenses and profit.
- Go on a field trip. A trip to a museum, art gallery or science center are always fun, especially over the summer when lots of kid’s programs are running. These types of field trips are also a fun way to stimulate your child’s brain to think mathematically. In addition to learning about inventors, inventions, and innovators, kids can explore, engage and interact with exhibits and hands-on activities and programs.
- Watch sports. It’s fun to watch sports together, and if you already do, consider incorporating math the next time you turn on the TV to cheer on your favourite team. Some fun ways to incorporate math into sports include keeping stats on favourite players, keeping score and track of how much time passes between goals, periods, innings, etc., calculating the probability of players’ scoring potential, and even starting a family fantasy league.
- Tackle a home improvement or DIY project together. So many DIY and home improvement projects require ‘doing math’. These types of projects will have your child working with numbers, measurements, and angles, calculating area, and even practicing problem-solving skills. Plus, when you work together, the project is more fun and often gets done quicker (sometimes).
Summer Math Learning at Mathnasium of Newmarket!
Our summer program is in full swing, and everyone is having a blast with math!
Our team of trained, experienced Newmarket math tutors are always here to support your child over the summer and make it fun to learn math. We have so many awesome manipulatives (like puzzles, games, LEGO bricks, blocks & more) to help your child catch up, keep up or get ahead in math.
For more info about Mathnasium of Newmarket and our summer programs please call our centre at (905) 895-6284. You’re also welcome to stop by our math learning centre located at 17725 Yonge Street, #102B in Newmarket.
We look forward to hearing from you, and we wish you a fun-filled summer!
