6 Ways to Practice Math Over the Summer

Need some activities to send with your students over the summer or do you have kids of your own you want to help keep their computation skills sharp? Here are 6 different ways that kids can practice important math skills at home (even if they don’t realize it!).

1. Cook or Bake Together

I always tell my students that I LOVE fractions because it always reminds me of food (anyone else relate?). Cooking and baking is one of the best ways to practice fractions in real life. Have students measure out ingredients, or challenge them to see if they can only use certain measurements. For example, allow them to only use ¼ cup. They would then need to figure out how many fourths go into a whole cup or ½ cup. Another way for them to practice multiplying or adding fractions is to double or triple a recipe!

2. Go grocery shopping

Does your student need help with decimals? Have them tag along to your next shopping trip and have them add up how much (to the penny) that you are buying! This gives them practice with decimals and helps them sharpen up their estimation skills. You can always have them estimate how much you are going to be spending as you shop as well. My family likes to make it a competition to see who can get closest to the actual total when we check out.

3. Play My Cow

This game is often played our car on road trips. To simplify the entire game: your goal is to get the most possible cows. You get a cow when you pass a cow pasture. Look for a future blog post with the official rules. This game helps students practice mental math, adding, and multiplying. Depending on how many cows you collect, students will be computing large numbers! Any great car counting game is wonderful for long car rides!

4. Play a board game

Board games are one of my favorite ways to make learning math fun! Many popular board games that you might have lying around will help students practice estimating, adding/subtracting, strategy and number sense. Some of my favorites are Monopoly, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Life, Payday, and Mall Madness.

5. Get your child involved in planning a trip

Going on a family vacation? Have your child help you plan! So much math is involved in a trip. Have them chart how many miles you are driving with Google maps, calculate and compare hotel prices, or see if they can estimate how much money your family will have to spend on gas! Not going anywhere? That’s ok! Have your student plan their own dream vacation where they must figure out all of those details!

6. Chalk Challenges

Summer always screams sidewalk chalk to me! For some reason, arithmetic always looks more fun in a pastel orange on steaming hot cement. Challenge your student to a math problem solving contest where you try to solve as many equations that will fit on your driveway (or a parking spot).

Bonus: Rainy day or busy? Check out my math coloring books to pass the time! Easy to print and go for some review fun!