Math Fun for Summer (or Anytime)

Bring math into your child’s daily life this summer to keep skills current. Here are three simple and fun activities to practice math that your child learned this past school year.

Here is a geometry activity that I’ve done many times with my 1st grade students. They love the hands-on practice of making real shapes.

• You’ll need a container of plastic drinking straws and some bendable twist-ties from plastic storage or trash bags.

• Use the straws and ties to construct two-dimensional shapes (polygons). For a triangle, use three straws and three ties.

• Connect the ends of each straw by inserting a tie about halfway into one straw, and then the other half of the tie into the next straw. They will bend at the corners to form and hold the shape of a perfect triangle.

• To construct a square and a rhombus (diamond), your child will need four straws and four ties.

• For a rectangle, six straws and six ties are needed.

For addition practice try a game called “add ’em up”:

• You’ll need a deck of playing cards with all face cards removed. Use the aces to represent numeral one. This can be for two or more players.

• Shuffle the deck and put it in a pile, numbers down.

• Players take turns, picking two cards each. They add the number value of the cards to get a total. The player with the highest sum wins all the cards. To break a tie, each player takes one more card and adds that to the total.

• When the pile is gone each player counts their cards. The player with the highest number of cards wins.

For telling time:

• Call attention to clocks you may see around your neighborhood. For example, look for analog or digital clocks on banks, stores, billboards, and other community places. Ask him to tell you the time he sees displayed. Help him, if needed.

• At baseball, soccer ,or other timed games that you watch, help her read and understand how much time is left in the half, or until the end of the game. Usually, these clocks count “down” so this can be a good time to help her practice counting backwards.

Try to find other opportunities involving simple math skills to challenge your young student as often as possible.