Fun Ways to Teach Math Skills: 8 Family Activities

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Family Activities That Teach Math Skills

The truth is, math is all around you. It’s even in the air. Equations surround you in harmony with nature. If you want to make math a less frightening subject for your kids, making it a more relevant part of their lives will give them the knowledge and confidence to go even higher than you thought in their math skills.

image of mom and daughter shopping for produce

Fun Ways to Teach Math While Shopping

Shopping – Every single grocery shopping trip is all about math, no matter what you are shopping for. You need to know what a good price is, what price you can afford, and how that price affects your bank account. Plus, you need to understand how much of something you need to buy for recipes or instructions. All of that requires that you use math. A shopping trip is a great way to teach basic math concepts.

Fun Ways to teach math Skills while traveling

Road Trips – Anytime you go on a road trip you can make it about math by talking to the kids about how far you’re going, how much gas costs, and other factors involving numbers on your trip. Let them use their skills to figure out your mileage, the approximate time it will take, and how much it will cost. You can even make a math game out of how many steps you walk once you get to your destination. Road trips are a fun way to approach using a word problem to learn important skills or understand a new concept like converting miles to kilometers.

fun ways to teach math while hanging out together

Tossing a Ball – It might seem weird to be able to teach math skills with nothing more than a ball, but you can. You can measure how far you can throw it, how high you can toss it, and if you have something to use to measure, even how fast you are throwing it. Each number discovered can be discussed in many ways to help enhance these mathematical concepts. Small groups can enjoy math fun and play games at the same time.

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Make Learning Math Skills Fun!

Board Games – Pretty much all board games involve at least counting, but if you can find some that are more mathematical, it will help more. For example, any game involving money or building a business, like Monopoly, Life, and games that involve problem-solving skills are perfect for learning skills of everyday life. the good news is that using board games, or even video games is a perfect way o learn math facts while enjoying a fun activity. Games often involve positive reinforcement and will keep the child’s interest much longer than a boring workbook with a multiplication table activity. They can even help with reducing math anxiety

Eat Well & Learn Math Skills

Baking – Baking requires precise measurements which are always great for learning math, like fractions. As you bake with your young kids, openly discuss the math that you are doing. Tell them things like, “We need 1/4 cup of flour for this recipe. This is a fraction of an entire cup, it’s one-fourth of a cup. If you separate this cup of flour into fours, you have 1/4 cup of flour.”
Build a Square Foot Garden – Gardening in and of itself is math-related too; you need to figure out how much water, how many vitamins and minerals, and how to mix the soil in the right proportions. When you build something, you also need to use measurements and math to build it right. elementary school students and older students will enjoy fun activities like gardening where they can learn math in different ways and bring the real world of learning into their own backyard.

Get Creative!

Have a Party – For a young learner, having a little party can also help them learn math. For example, a party with finger foods, fondue, and other items that can be counted and picked up individually are good ways to talk about numbers. “Jonny, I have four slices of apple here, if I dip this chunk in the chocolate and eat it, how many apples will I have left?” Visual learners will find this to be an easy way to learn without using flash cards.
Do Some Art – Art is also a perfect way to teach math like proportion, angles, polytypes, perspective, and more. It’s all mathematical and can be described using mathematical phrases. As your child learns to draw using math, they will start to understand the concepts of math in nature.

While some of the math will sink in by merely playing, it’s best to play and talk. Talk about the numbers involved and explain their relation to subjects they will learn or are learning in school. You’ll open a brand-new world of opportunity to your children by making math feel natural – because it is.

There are many creative ways to learn math. the best way will likely involve fun games, that provide math problems along with everyday activities. Choose real objects and play some of your student’s favorite games on a daily basis. There are a variety of ways to practice math equations without using a math book. No matter what you choose Fun math activities at the end of a lesson are always helpful to reinforce an important concept.