Math Practice in Real-Life

Throughout my years as an elementary school teacher parents have asked me to send home extra math practice for their child. I send home extra practice, but I also say, “You do not really need extra practice pages. Just include math in your everyday life. That will help them the most, because it makes the connection between math in school to the math we all use in our lives.”

Examples of ways to do this:

*Shopping at the grocery store: Have your child weigh produce, estimate the amount it will cost to buy items they want, compare mass of items in the store simply using the packaging information, compare 1 liter bottles to 2 liter bottles etc.

*Baking at home: When baking, have your child help measure ingredients, determine the amount of time it will take to bake two batches of cookies using the time it takes to bake one batch, determine the elapsed time from when you began making cookies to the time you take them out of the oven etc.

*Using household items: Have your child use dried beans to practice counting (including counting by 2s, 5s and 10s), as this will help them when they move into multiplication and division. You can also use dried beans for making equal groups to practice multiplying or dividing, adding and subtracting. Any items you have at home that can be counted or grouped are great for this purpose. It can even be a child’s toy collection. Anything can be used to do math, and it is more engaging than just doing extra worksheets at home.

*Using the rooms in your home: Work with your child to measure the perimeter of a room (length all the way around) and use the side measurements of the wall/floor to find the area of that space (square measurement of the space you will cover). This is great when needing to determine the amount of paint to buy if you are painting a room or just a wall. This also leads into the math of determining how much money you will need for the paint and all the supplies needed to paint the walls. This can also lead to comparing how much it will cost you to do the work in relation to how much it would cost if you have someone else do the work.

There are so many ways to bring math into your child’s life. The best part of this is that it is real math, and you are doing it with them, building strong bonds with your child. You may not find out until much later, when your child is an adult, just how much it meant to them. I know that my students love telling me about working with their parent or grandparent when they do fun math related activities.

I hope this gives you some ideas of ways to help your child become more successful in math.