By Justin Smith, Mathnasium Instructor
Summer time! That means no learning, right? Well, only if you’re okay with falling behind, or at the very least getting a bit rusty. Math is a skill, meaning that it is developed and improved over time. If you intend to put on a lot of muscle, you would go to the gym a lot of times, and repeat similar motions, and you would slowly gain the muscle over time. The same is true of mathematics, in that you need to do a lot of things repeatedly in order to improve your skills. Summer time is the perfect time to get “out of practice” for doing math.
So if your kids aren’t going to school, how do you remedy this problem? Luckily for you, there are a few good ways.
1. Schedule the Day Together
Not only will this help to set guidelines for what the day will look like, as well as make your children feel like they have some amount of say in what happens in their lives, but if you ask the right questions, they’ll strengthen their core math skills as well. “We have to be at our appointment at 4:15. If it takes 30 minutes to get there, and we want to be 5 minutes early, what time do we have to leave?” It’s an innocuous question, and a fairly mundane one. It’s a question you could answer on your own easily, but if you ask your child to answer it for you, you’re helping grow and practice skills that will help to maintain and build a foundation for future success.
2. Cook Together
Yes, really. Recipes have all sorts of numbers and conversions that help to build on a math education. Fractions are one of the biggest parts of cooking. Let your kids figure out what the numbers mean by looking, and answer questions they may have about sizes and amounts. If we have 2/3rds cup of this, plus 1 cup of that, plus another 2½ cups of something else… What size bowl do we need? What’s the difference between a Liter and a Gallon? Luckily, most of our containers list both units of measurement, helping to learn and gauge approximately how many of these are equivalent to how many of those. Even if some of the concepts are a little advanced, the practice will help for later.
3. Bring Up Math in Sports and Video Games
If kids are playing basketball, they know that a basket is worth 2 (sometimes 1, or 3) points. If you’re watching or playing, ask how many combinations of points might be possible to get ahead. Ask how much time they’ll need to score those points. Talk about your own mental math as you’re going through it—that way, kids can learn through observation. If they see you doing math while playing a game, they’ll start doing the same. The same is true for video games. How many experience points will it take to level up? How many robots do you need to kill in order to get that many experience points? If you’re killing 4 robots a minute, how long will that take? Math is everywhere, and practicing those questions is the same as a mental workout.
4. Enroll Your Kids in a Summer Math Program
There are plenty of great reasons for this. Firstly, if you’re not in the habit of asking math questions all day, it might be hard to remember to do all the time. Secondly, it will create a sense of structure for the summer months, whereas otherwise they may be a bit chaotic. There’s also the fact that your kids may be at a more advanced stage of their math, and solving questions like the ones posed above may be too simple. It’s possible that you don’t remember the type of math that your kids are learning. It’s possible that you simply don’t want to sit down and work on math when you have other things to do. Any and all of these reasons are valid, and summer math programs are a great way to make sure all of the above practices are strengthened and remembered.
Depending on your own level of expertise in math and science, there are other things you can do. This is only a primer, and a few suggestions, but you can be creative as well. If the car holds 15 gallons of gas, how much do we save by going to this gas station vs. the one across the street? If we’re going 10 miles at 60 miles an hour, how long will it take to arrive? Math is used everywhere, and there are plenty of ways to sneak it into conversations that will both make your kids feel smart and helpful, and also help to hone in and practice skills they’ll need when the summer ends and school begins.
Learn more about how the Mathnasium Method builds confidence and makes math fun and easy to learn.
Contact us to schedule a FREE math skills assessment for your child.
(818) 696-1060
