5 Real Life Ways to Help Kids Learn Math This Summer

When the final school bell rings, that does not have to mean that learning is over. Mathematics has many practical, real-life applications.

Mathematics is one of the most stressed school subjects, yet it has many practical, real-life applications. Parents can help their children stay on top of math skills, or even learn a few new ones, over the summer vacation by giving them a chance to use math every day.

Sell Something to Build Math Skills

From the neighborhood lemonade stand to making clothes for dolls, selling their unique product is a wonderful and fun way for kids to practice their math skills. Unlike a typical summer job, creating products to sell helps children to learn about profit, product costs, and business skills.

Kids of all ages can create some sort of product to sell. Young children can make homemade bookmarks, while older ones can do anything from sewing to painting. Explain that the money they spend to purchase what they need to make the product comes out of the money they make selling it. Kids will need to understand basic addition and subtraction, as well as work on simple multiplication and division skills to find a price per product.

And in the end, they will have a great summer adventure as an entrepreneur to go along with those math skills.

Building Things Uses Mathematics

Hammering nails and cutting wood is more than just a creative act, it can also be an exercise in mathematics. Building even a basic birdhouse requires understanding geometry and putting it into practice.

Kids can practice their math skills by building bird houses, or dollhouses, of various sizes and shapes. They have to be able to match angels and shapes, use measurements, and determine square feet to build and paint each small house.

This is a great practical application of mathematics, and each house can also be sold as a lesson on profits.

There is Math in the Kitchen

Younger kids can still get into a mathematics groove by helping out in the kitchen. When parents spend the summer teaching their kids about cooking, they are also teaching important skills for working with fractions and ratios.

Let kids measure ingredients for recipes to get a hands-on example of why measuring, fractions, and ratios are so important. Parents can also encourage critical thinking in these subjects by doubling a recipe, or making half of it instead. Kids will need to see a fraction and find what doubles or halves to make the recipes work.

Not only is this a fun way to work on basic math, but it is also a great way for parents to spend quality time with their kids.

Open a Savings Account

Many banks offer savings and checking accounts for kids. Starting a small savings account is an excellent way for kids to learn money management skills, and also work on math.

Most savings accounts offer a small percentage of interest each month or each year. This interest can add up to increase a person’s savings over time. They are helping a child save money and understand how their savings grows means covering percentages, multiplication, and division.

Children can make a goal that they want to work for at the end of the summer. They will then need to determine how much money they will need to save each month to meet that goal. Including the interest in the calculations for a more accurate number. Kids can also figure out how many hours at a summer job, or how many homemade products, they would need to reach their goals.

Plan a Trip

Everyone hates the math questions involving train A and train B leaving the platform, but there is a practical and fun way to learn the same concepts. Plan a summer vacation trip and let the kids help calculate mileage, travel times, and even gas stops.

If the shorter road has a slower speed limit, and the long road has a faster one, which will get the family there first? In what towns should the family stop for gas? And which destination will be the longest to get to? Finding the answers to these common travel questions involves a map, mathematics, and a lot of fun.

Even though school may be over, and kids are celebrating the end of math classes, parents can still help them stay on top of math concepts. By using real-life situations, math can be fun to use. Whether kids are running a small business, making crafts, cooking food, saving for a goal, or planning a family vacation, they are using their math skills every day.

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Author Bio: Kaylee Osuna is a professional essay writer at EssayWriterCheap.org, who loves to read and write about Psychology. She has participated in different conferences and presentations to gain more knowledge and experience. Her goal is to help people cope with their problems.

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