Summer Math with your Children: Parent Newsletter 6

Summer Math with your Children: Fun and Rewarding
By Linda Levi

Soon schools will be closing for the summer. Many of us are thinking of ways to include reading into our children’s summer routines. It is also important to think of ways for our children to engage in mathematics over the summer. Research shows that children who do not engage in mathematics can lose about a month of learning over the summer. Over 6 years of elementary school, this can add up to 6 months or about 2/3 of an academic year.

Engaging in mathematics with your children can be just as rewarding as reading with them. This doesn’t mean you should go out and buy math workbooks for your children to do this summer. Even if you would enjoy working through workbooks together, they are unlikely to provide the rich experience that you as a parent can provide for your child.

Before I offer some of my favorite ways for families to engage in mathematics, here are two important things to remember when doing math with your children.

Allow children to do the math in their own ways. If your child is having trouble, encourage him or her to get some paper and pencil to draw or write something that might help. Children may also benefit from having counters (such as pennies or small blocks) that they can use to act out the problem. It is often tempting to say, “Your way of solving that problem was good, now let me show you another way.” Do your best to resist this temptation. Children are typically very proud of their solution strategies. This pride is very empowering and encourages them to take risks when trying new strategies. Having an adult show you a better strategy can diminish a child’s pride in her or his strategy.

After children solve a problem, ask them to explain what they did. We all learn from reflecting on our thinking. Explaining your ideas to an interested adult is an excellent way for elementary school children to reflect on their thinking.

Here are some ways to do math with your children:

Make everyday situations into math story problems. It is impossible to get through the day without using mathematics. Here are some examples of how you might turn everyday situations into math problems.

Let young children set the table without telling them how many forks they need; try this sometime when you are having company.

If you decide to give your child money to spend on something, increase the level of difficulty your child may have in figuring out what he or she can buy. Figuring out what you can buy with a handful of change is far more challenging than figuring out what you can buy with a dollar bill. For younger children, give them only dimes and pennies.

If you decide to give your child an allowance, it need not be a nice round number. An older child might get $3.37 each week. Ask her how long it will take before she has $10.

Make the way you talk about time challenging for children. Once your child has the basics of telling time, you can say, “We’re going to visit Aunt Tessa at 5:00, go look at the clock and tell me how much longer will that be.”, or “You can leave on your light to read for another 20 minutes, what time will it be then?” (This last one might be difficult if it is 8:53.)

When driving in the car or riding on the bus, ask children mathematical questions, “If we buy 5 gallons of gas at that gas station we just passed, how much would it cost?”, “If we count all the eyes of the people on this bus, how many would there be?”, “If we count all the fingers of the people in the car, I wonder how many there would be.”

Children often need to do some mathematics to fully understand the books they read. You might say, “Charlie has to walk 2 ½ miles just to get to school. Your school is about half a mile from our house. How many times would you have to walk to school to walk 2 ½ miles?”

Play math games with your children. Some of my favorite math games are: Mille Bornes, Clue, Set, Connect Four, Mastermind and traditional card games like Rummy. Other games that involve good mathematics include: Battleship, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon. There are many video or computer games that involve more than hand eye coordination. If your children play video games, try to include some problem solving games in their repertoire.

Provide plenty of building toys. Children learn problem solving and spatial skills when they play with blocks or other construction toys. Interlocking blocks like Lego and K’Nex provide additional challenges. Mud and sand are great summer building materials. Ask children to draw what they have made. Ask, “Can you draw what the other side would look like without going over there to look at it?”

Have fun! The most important thing to remember when doing math with your child is to make sure that the activities are rewarding for everyone. If your child isn’t engaged or is getting too frustrated with a particular activity, let it go. You can always try something new on another day.

Linda Levi is an Elementary School Mathematics Consultant and Researcher and Developer of Cognitively Guided Instruction. Dr. Levi has researched the factors that enable children to learn math with understanding and is currently studying how the teaching of mathematics in elementary school can prepare children for success in algebra.