Math Tips for Parents
As a parent, you can help your child feel confident about their math with a little extra practice and some fun things to do when your child is not in school. Math is all around us. Bringing attention to everyday math occurrences can provoke inquiry and great discussion.
Be positive about math. Let your child know that everyone can and does use math all the time!
Involve your children in math.
Math Games are fun! They are inexpensive too! Games strengthen number skills, fluency, and strategic thinking. You can Google, Education Games to Play at Home and you will have many ideas to select from.
Problem Solving
Encourage problem solving in everyday situations. Problem solving is the basis of good mathematical thinking. You can do this by asking questions and helping your child to ask meaningful questions.
READ!!!
Often, children are able to understand math concepts through story better than with isolated skill practice. Check with your local library for books on:
Be positive about math. Let your child know that everyone can and does use math all the time!
Involve your children in math.
- Children can help measure when you bake.
- Count backwards when brushing teeth, brushing hair, walking on stairs.
- Make estimates of how long it will take do to something and see how close the estimate was.
- Children love to sort beans, coins, cards, colored headbands, pasta noodles, crayons, laundry! etc. You can sort into color, shape, or size.
- Count out coins together when paying for an item.
- Tell the time on the clock when you leave or enter the house.
- Use old magazines and catalogs to have children create a collage of circles, squares, and triangles. See if any other shapes can be found and identified.
- Take out cups, jars and a bowl of water and children will explore capacity and volume on their own.
- Look for patterns or have fun with clapping out patterns.
- Have a scavenger hunt.
- Have children distribute an item equally perhaps a food at mealtime.
Math Games are fun! They are inexpensive too! Games strengthen number skills, fluency, and strategic thinking. You can Google, Education Games to Play at Home and you will have many ideas to select from.
- If you have a deck of cards, ask your child to show you a game that they have played in school. Top It is one of our favorite games and it is played just like war! Top It can be played with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division!
- “Go Fish” teaches counting and grouping in sets. Working with Dominos can do the same.
- Board games teach how to read and use dice and if you play with 2 dice, you are also working on addition. Backgammon teaches addition, subtraction, and strategy.
- Yahtzee Checkers
- Mancala Chess
- Chutes and Ladders Monopoly
- Stratego Clue
Problem Solving
Encourage problem solving in everyday situations. Problem solving is the basis of good mathematical thinking. You can do this by asking questions and helping your child to ask meaningful questions.
- How many different ways are there to walk to school? What’s another way to arrange the furniture in this room?
- How many different ways can I measure flour to get ½ cup?
- Can you come up with a different way to get to an answer?
- What is another route to get to our destination?
- How long do you think it will take us to get there?
- Why do you think that is happening?
READ!!!
Often, children are able to understand math concepts through story better than with isolated skill practice. Check with your local library for books on:
- Counting Multiplication Measurement
- Addition Division Money
- Subtraction Time Problem Solving