Spring Break Math Moments

Spring Break Math Moments

The start of spring is a time to reset, relax and prepare to finish the remaining school days successfully. However, you can still incorporate math moments into your child’s week to help keep their math motivation up and slow any regression.  Working these activities into your spring schedule can help maintain your child’s enthusiasm outside of the classroom. If you and your child are tiring of worksheets and need some spring break math activities with a little more action, here is some tips to keep your child engaged while enjoying some spring fun and sun.

1) Make Math Moments

Most of us had to forego sunny beach vacations for another spring break thanks to COVID. But the good news is, you can find many natural math moments just going throughout the day with your child. One great example is your next weekly grocery trip to the store. Give your child the grocery list and work with them to calculate the cost of the groceries, noting the differences of how some food items are weighed in ounces and others by the pound. If using coupons, challenge your child to calculate and compare the amount of money saved with using coupons versus no coupons. If you have a shopping budget, allow your child to help make sure the costs of the items say in budget. After the grocery trip, take a few minutes to go over the receipt and discuss the cost of the items and any discounts given.

2) Break Out the Games

Some of the classic board games we play are great for reinforcing math skills while involving fun and family participation. The Monopoly board game is great for practicing addition, subtraction, and how to perform financial transactions. It also involves learning how to use strategy to earn the most money and walk away a winner! With Scrabble you can combine spelling and math skills. Assign your child to be the score keeper to tally up the total points for each player.

When your child gets tired of bored games, puzzles are also a great activity. You can choose a puzzle with varying degrees of difficulty to reinforce learning about shapes and strategy.

3) Visit Museums Virtually

Although most museums are still closed due to the COVID pandemic, thanks to technology you can still get the museum experience by accessing their online content. Here are a few to visit virtually:

•  The National Museum of Mathematics in New York is offering lots of free online content for kids of all ages from grades K to 12.
• The Denver Museum of Nature & Science also has lots of free STEM-related virtual videos and content for kids and adults.
• The Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC is currently closed to the public, but you can still take advantage of all the STEM-related content online from this branch of the national Smithsonian museum system.

4) Use Leftover Easter Candy

Make good of your leftover PEEPS and Easter candy by turning it into a math Easter egg hunt. Fill plastic toy eggs with candy and a math problem written on paper. Hide the eggs around the house and set your child free to find them. When they find an egg, challenge them to solve the math problem to earn the treat. You can also write a math problem on the top and bottom of each egg, with the goal for your child to solve the problem before receiving the egg.

5) Get a Green Thumb

If the weather allows, get out in the backyard, and do some planting. If you already have a garden or some house plants, show your child what you have previously planted and explain how you planned where to put each one to show examples of measurement and distance. If you have some leftover seeds, let them count how many seeds are in the packet.  Research with them how much water and sunlight the plant needs to grow and how large it will ultimately be.

Preventing math learning loss during spring does not have to mean pouring over math problems in a book all week outside of assigned homework (unless that's your child's preference). Spring break is for a reason and it's meant to be enjoyed. But you can still incorporate fun and relevant moments for math learning to reinforce math as an integral part of everyday life.

Our Mathnasium center is open year-round, and our instructors can help keep your child engaged in fun and educational activities. At Mathnasium, we cover math subjects from elementary to high school. If your child cannot make it to the center, we can come to you. Our center also offers online instruction for children in grades 2 through 12 so your child can continue to learn in between your busy schedules. Reach out to use today to get started!