Math Everyday
Working with children to help them discover mathematics in their daily lives is an excellent way for families to enjoy mathematics together. The following are ideas that parents can use as a way of following up on concepts that are being taught in the classroom.
Around the Home:
- Encourage explorative math play at home (e.g., invite your child to build, measure, and compare structures made with different-sized cardboard boxes; build and describe structures in a sandbox; play jump-rope games or games like hopscotch, catch, and hide-and-seek).
- Explore opportunities for your child to make connections with mathematics in daily routines (e.g., estimating the distance to a nearby location, measuring the time it takes to complete a chore). Be sure to talk with your child about the math connections in these activities.
- Work along with your child in creating designs from toothpicks, straws, paper shapes, paper towel rolls, and other found materials. Invite your child to describe his or her design(s) using numbers, words, and pictures.
- Play board games, number cube (dice) games, card games, and dominoes, and solve puzzles together. In conversation, ask your child to tell you what he or she did to try to win the game or solve the puzzle. Then ask your child to tell you whether he or she would do the same thing next time and give reasons why or why not.
- Invite your child to save his or her change in a piggy bank or other suitable container. Identify coins and bills, and estimate and count money.
- Engage in role-play games such as "store" or "restaurant" with your child. One person can be the owner of the store or restaurant and the other person can be the customer. Be sure to pose grade-level and age-appropriate math problems for your child to solve as you play.
- Children love to play "school". Try being the student and let your child be the math teacher.
- Bake or cook together and follow directions for favourite recipes.
- Create and describe a pattern together while you frost a cake.
- Invite your child to place 3 eggs in an egg carton. Ask, "How many more eggs to do we need to fill the carton?" Then arrange the same 3 eggs differently, using different sections of the carton, and ask, "How many eggs are in the whole carton?" Always have your child explain his or her reasoning be asking, "How do you know?" Try again, this time using a different number of eggs.
- Cut an apple into thirds, fourths, and/or halves and have your child put the apple back together to make a whole.
- Read numbers in newspapers, in telephone books, on addressed envelopes, on bills, on household thermostats, on measuring tapes, and so forth.
- Help your child find items in your home that are shaped like cubes, pyramids, cones, spheres, cylinders, octagons, hexagons, and rectangular and triangular prisms.
- In the kitchen, have your child compare large cans with small cans and large boxes with small boxes. You can risk, "Which is the big one?" "Which is the small one?"
- Have your child estimate and count! Count everything (e.g., books, chairs, CDs, towels, steps, tiles on a floor).
- Count by 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, and 7s and remember to consider the ability and grade level of your child to know where to begin and when to stop.
- Count forward and count backwards, starting with different numbers.
- Sort a variety of items at home (e.g., toys, utensils, dishes, socks, mail, shoes, colouring tools, fabric, recyclables). Describe the sorting rule. Try sorting the same item(s) again using a new rule.
- Talk about math experiences in daily events (e.g., measuring laundry detergent, packing a suitcase, creating a grocery list, setting an alarm clock).
- Keep a family yearly calendar. Record upcoming events and count the number of days, weeks, and months up to the event. Use words like days, weeks, months, and year.
In The Neighbourhood:
- Play I Spy, looking for and describing shapes in a playground, on a farm, in a town, or in a city.
- Estimate and count things in a grocery store.
- Ask, "How are the foods grouped in the grocery store?"
- Talk about what is heavy and what is light in a grocery store.
- Estimate and measure produce in a grocery store.
- When you are waiting in line to pay for your groceries, ask your child to estimate how much the bill will be. This activity can be done at the end of a meal at a restaurant as well.
- Find the shortest and the longest checkout line in a grocery store.
- Find and describe patterns in a section of a garden.
- Look for and identify sets during a nature walk (e.g., each maple leaf has three parts; insects have six legs).
- Estimate and count the number of footsteps between two trees as you walk.
- Use non-standard and/or standard measurement units to estimate and measure the distance between two fence posts or other objects.
- Look for, identify, and describe patterns in a landscape.
- Ask you child for examples of perimeter and area in his or her daily life.
- Collect some rocks with your child and ask your child to sort them: heavy and light, shiny and dull, big and small, rough and smooth. How many of each are there? Ask your child to use the different-shaped rocks to create an image.
- Predict and measure the length of time of your walks.
On The Road:
- When you are travelling in a car or sitting on a bench, take turns with your child calling out license plate numbers (driver excluded for safety reasons).
- Ask younger children to name the largest single-digit number and the smallest single-digit number and to call out the numbers in order from smallest to largest. Some children may just name each number.
- Read the numbers on a license plate as nubmer words.
- Ask young children to double each digit in the license plate number.
- The next time you fill up your car with gas, let your child read the different numbers on the pump.
In The Garden:
- Help your child estimate how much space will be needed for planting.
- Together, plan a shape for your garden.
- Create a list of the types of plants that you would like to buy and list how many of each.
- Estimate how many plants of each kind will fit into the garden.
- Help your child estimate how many flowers and/or vegetables you will need to buy.
- Discuss and plan the arrangement of the plants in the garden.
- Estimate how much time it will take to plant the garden. Plant the garden together and measure the time that it takes to plant one plant, two plants, and the whole garden.
- Create a watering schedule.
- Depending on your child's interest and ability level, ask such questions as, "How many fewer cucumber plants do we have than tomato plants? How many more tomato plants do we have than cucumber plants?" "Which are the shortest and tallest plants?" "What is the largest number of plants of one kind in our garden? What is the smallest number?"
- Help your child estimate how big the plants will grow, then measure the plants when they are full grown.
References:
Ontario Ministry of Education. (2003a). A guid to effective instruction in mathematics, Kindergarten to Grade 6 - Volumen Four. Toronto: Author.