Maths skills decline more over the summer than any other academic skill, according to researchers from Duke University. Some students lose up to 3 months of learning over the summer holiday period. Maths skills declined more than reading skills, since children were more likely to carry out summer tasks and activities linked to reading.
Mix and match these 15 activities to create a maths filled summer for you and your family and halt the deadly maths summer slide.
1. Read a maths story
Kill two birds with one stone and combine maths with reading to improve both numeracy and literacy skills. Amazon has a great selection of maths stories or camp out in the kids science book section of your local bookstore for an hour.
2. Play a game
Maths game come in all shapes and sizes, so choose your favourite. Choose from my top Amazon preschool choices or have a look at this bumper pack of inexpensive printable maths board games
3. Watch a You Tube video
Take a break from dancing cats and watch some quirky maths! Multiplication raps, maths doodles and my current favourite math boy’s mom can all add a short burst of maths into your child’s day.
4. Play cards Traditional card games are full of logic and arithmetic. Math 4 Love presents Triangle, a card game especially designed to practise addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
5. Visit a museum – Look up the summer maths programs for your local science museums, or just browse around and highlight the different ways maths in involved in the various sciences.
6. Play a travel game – Use those long car journeys or endless airport delays to play some travelling maths games with your captive audience.
7. Be the change – Teaching kids how to save money is a useful way to keep math skills developing in the summer and throughout the rest of the year. Start saving for your next family vacation by tossing spare change into a community piggy bank. Kids will stay interested in math by having them guess how much money is in the "vacation fund" and then counting the change.
8. Play chess – Play this ultimate logic game on a traditional board, or try the various versions available online, and on smartphones.
9. Record and analyze data – Keeping track of wins/losses or basic statistics can be useful in measuring progress as well as developing a child's math skills. Stats can be added to a graph for more visualization. These skills can be used across the board from a kid tracking their own batting average to following trends in the local professional teams. Sports can be a fun way to get the whole family involved in learning math.
10. Get practical – Try these pre teen focused practically fun maths games and activities.
11. Bake – Younger children can practise number recognition and counting and your older ones can scale up or scale down recipes, for a tasty mathematical distraction.
12. Plan a trip – Use Google maps to help you and your child investigate journey distances and travel times to make sure your family arrives at that important destination on time!
13. Play Live Online Maths Games – Registered players on Calculation Nation, can practise fractions, factors and many other maths topics against other students online, using this website run by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
14. Set up a Lemonade Stand – Help your child run a drinks stand to help boost mathematical, ingredient measuring and money management skills.
15. Visit your local Mathnasium – Avoid the summer slide by bringing your children to Mathnasium for math fun and games as well as helping them catch up, keep up, and get ahead in math!
Have you noticed the maths summer slide in your child? Will you be doing more math this summer? What is favorite fun math summer holiday activity?
