By Monica Patel, Implementation
Strategist, Suntex International Inc.
Children love
summer—mostly because it’s a break from school—but that doesn’t mean learning
should come to a halt. ‘Summer Slide’ is a phenomenon where skills that have
been acquired during the school year start to slip away due to lack of
practice. Yet, summer presents some of the best times for practical math
lessons. Here are some ideas for keeping students’ minds as active as their
bodies this summer:
Transform Routine Activities into Mini Math
Lessons. Teach your children
the practical side of math by incorporating it into your routine activities,
giving it an outside-of-the-classroom appeal. Try giving the kids a budget for
grocery shopping, letting them keep track of the cost of items as you add them
to the cart. Determine the total amount you’ve spent and how much money you
have left over. Depending on their age and ability, you can ask them to
multiply your state’s tax percentage and add to the total. Be sure to check
their answers with your check-out receipt.
Use Math on Your Road Trip. Taking a family road-trip presents dozens of
opportunities for children to keep their minds active. At the most basic level,
ask your child to count the number of white or black cars they see, or keep
track of the number of billboards you pass. Let more advanced children assist
with the road-trip budget, calculating how much is spent on gas, food and fun
family activities. Try adding all the numbers on other cars’ license
plates. With older children, you
can list the operations, such as “add the first two numbers, multiply the
result by the next number, and subtract the last number.”
Give Them Instant Feedback. Instant feedback is proven to be a critical
part of any math learning experience. When kids sit down to complete a summer
math worksheet or go through a stack of flashcards, you have the opportunity to
give them instant feedback on what they are doing correctly, and to praise them
for successfully completing the task at hand.
Provide Summer Reading. Reading has always been associated with a
pleasurable summer activity and even symbolizes relaxation. There
are a number of exciting books that correlate with mathematical topics for all
ages. If your pre-teen needs to work on area and perimeter, Sir Cumference and the
Sword in the Cone: A Math Adventure, would be one among numerous good
reads. For younger readers, Even Steven
and Odd Todd or How Much is a
Million? are great for number sense story-based activities, as are other
books that should be listed by your local library under ‘math activities’. This approach can help to alleviate ‘math
phobias’ that prevent children from enjoying a core life skill.
Use Deep Practice Methods.
According to Daniel Coyle’s book, The
Talent Code, breaking a complex skill—like mathematics—into manageable
pieces, and mastering the individual pieces through trial and error, error
correction and focused repetition facilitates math processing speed and
strength. Enabling children to use deep practice tactics with math-oriented computer programs, lets trial and error and instant feedback push math skills along.
Bring Math to the Pool. If you dread the 15-minute lifeguard break
at the community pool, use the time to practice math instead. Fill the
sit-around time with math problems to help the time fly. A few ideas for ‘pool
problems’:
·
If you and your friend each swam 2 laps in the
three pools here, how many laps in all would that equal?
·
Estimate how many kids are waiting for the
lifeguard to blow his whistle?
·
If it is 12:02pm now and the lifeguard will let
us back into the pool at 12:15pm, how many minutes do we have left?
·
If each lap is 50 yards, how many laps would you
need to swim to go 200 yards? How about 500 yards?
Whichever kid answers the most questions right gets to jump
back into the pool first or earns a treat. Watch other parents gather around
you!
Track Summer Activities. Encourage your child to keep a log of what
they do this summer, and at the end of each week, turn the information from the
log into a colorful graph or chart displaying how they spent their time. For
example, if they complete their chores each morning, they can put a tally mark
in the chores box. If they complete a bike ride, a check goes in the ‘road
bike’ box. By the end of the summer, their activities can be made into a lesson
in tally marks, counting, graphs and charts—and even percentages for more
advanced kids. Remember, the human brain is a small organ that will only invest
effort and energy into a task where it sees immediate results. Visuals like
graphs reinforce the results of their efforts.
The activities
suggested above are targeted to 1-5th grade students. Growing up, you
may have experienced that learning math was drab and dreary, but with these fun
math-centered activities, your child will learn to enjoy math. Math, science
and technology-related fields are where the jobs will be in the future for
today’s children. So helping to give your children a positive attitude about
math is one of the best gifts you can give them this summer.
About Monica
Patel:
Monica Patel is
an Implementation Strategist for Suntex International Inc., makers of the First
in Math game series, a tool designed to make math appealing and accessible to
children, teachers and parents nationwide. Patel comes from a rich background
in Special Education and Applied Behavior Analysis. She is a parent advocate
for Autism and devotes much of her time to helping children succeed at
mathematics.
