Math Games in Everyday Life

As parents, we have some really great opportunities to introduce, reinforce, and practice math skills with our kids. Including our kids in some of our everyday activities while pointing out “real world” uses is an easy and painless way to help our kids understand and conceptualize all kinds of math skills.



Here are a few fun ideas and games to get you started:

SIGN HUNT
Go on a sign hunt! While on a walk or a car trip, bring along your camera phone or inexpensive digital camera. Have your child search for signs (traffic, directional, business, etc) and take photos of the signs he/she finds. Better yet, have your child take the photos. When you get home, upload them to your computer and cuddle up together to organize the sign photos by color, shape, etc. Are there more of one color/shape? How many are there? How many more are there of one kind than another? Getting your child involved in the hunting, snapping, and organizing is a great way to learn basic color and shape recognition as well as counting and basic organizing skills.


GO FISH
Remember playing “Go Fish” when you were a kid? Well this simple game is a fantastic way for your child to learn number recognition!




CONCENTRATION
How about “Concentration”? This card-flipping challenge is sometimes called the “Memory Game” and for good reason. Taking turns flipping over numbered cards to hunt for matches is a great way to enhance number recognition and number matching while at the same time slowly developing concentration skills and spacial memory…in a fun way!


ZOO GAME
A super easy game which will help your child develop counting skills as well as basic addition and subtraction is the zoo game. With just a couple of cute boxes of animal crackers and a tray or plate you can make your own zoo. With parent as zookeeper, place a couple of animal crackers into the zoo (plate) and ask your child how many animals are there. Add a couple more and ask again. Every time your child eats a cracker or two ask your child to count them out (subtraction the fun way!). Continue adding and subtracting until snack time is over. How fun!


FAMILY COOKING
Cook with your child! Including them in kitchen activities while you’re cooking and baking is a super way to learn about estimation (How many chocolate chips are in each cookie?), measuring (ingredients), fractions (teaspoons, tablespoons, half cup, whole cup, etc.), and counting (How many cups of flour do we put into the bowl?), and the results are delicious!


MONEY GAMES
And kids of all ages will benefit from money games. Matching coins or paper money denominations, counting, adding, and subtracting are all great activities. Let your child get hands-on with money while talking about it! Both younger and older kids will benefit from the exercise of planning, budgeting, and saving for a particular item purchase. Is there a toy, game, or some other item your child is yearning for? Well, help them to find out the price and then plan, budget, and save for that item. When that goal is achieved then go on a shopping trip together and let your child get the item from the shelf, take it to the counter, and pay for it themselves. What a great life lesson! It’s never too early to learn money management.

We have so many everyday opportunities to teach our kids math skills and to make it fun!