Math is for Everyone: Resources for Quick and Easy Family-Centered Math Activities
Whether you homeschool, are actively seeking summer bridge activities, or just want something to do with the kids every now and then, math is something that can be really nice to do together as a family. Especially if you’re not that into math yourself.
We all know the many benefits, for parents and children, of family-centered activities. But family-centered activities that are also learning-centered have additional benefits–they model good learning habits, and they make learning fun. They can also, if you, yourself, are a little dicey about a certain subject, go a long way towards NOT passing down that same leeriness in your children (It took my partner and I several minutes, and a paper and pencil, to figure out the per-comic price in a Classifieds ad in which a guy was selling 1400 comic books for $99–we do NOT want our daughters to grow up that fundamentally math-stupid).
Here are some of my favorite books that present fun math activities for young and old, for math novices and math experts:
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- Nifty Thrifty Math Crafts, by Michele C. Hollow. I like hands-on stuff, especially arts and crafts, so this book is an accessible way for me to sneak some math projects into my family’s finger-painting, play dough, bead-stringing, chalk drawing day.
- Fun with Math. The nice thing about this book is that the instructions for each project are contained within each two-page spread, with lots of photo illustrations, so slightly older kids could even do many of these independently. If you’re looking for projects that are overtly math-centric, however, you might have a harder time making the connection between size comparison and finger puppets, for instance.
- Games for Math, by Peggy Kaye. For a very tactile, body-oriented, or active family, these games are a great way to take math outside, or in the car, or into the playroom, helping kids internalize some basic to very advanced math concepts.
- Bringing Math Home, by Suzanne L. Churchman. Especially helpful for kids in traditional school institutions, these games and activities are overtly tied to specific school-level learning goals for specific grades.
- Eenie Meenie Miney Math. This book is primarily for families with preschoolers, and most of the games are simple things that you may or may not have thought of on your own–matching coins, for instance, or drawing patterns in sand.
- Counting on Math, by Kathy Faggella and Martha A. Hayes. This book is for children from preschool through about grade two in a traditional school system, and includes not just games and activities and craft projects to do together as a family, but also a few worksheet pages to photocopy and give to a kid to keep her occupied for a few minutes while you drink your coffee.
- Cool Math, by Christy Maganzini. Written to children who are independent readers, this book includes lots of games, such as number magic and cipher codes, that families can play together to strengthen everyone’s mental math abilities.
- 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Raise a Child Who Loves Math, Kathy A. Zahler. There are fewer specific games and activities in this book than there are ongoing lifestyle-type projects, such as how to help kids start a savings plan, or how to set kids up to plan the family road trip.
- Play and Find Out about Math: Easy Activities for Young Children, by Janice VanCleave. Although the activities are geared towards young children, most are pracitical little exercises that can be fun for anyone who hasn’t thought of them before–how to accurately divide a candy bar into different fractions, or how to use your knuckles to tell how many days a month has, or how to draw a star or make paper doll chains.
- The Giant Encyclopedia of Math Activities for Children 3 to 6: The benefit of this book, also geared towards young children, is that almost all the activities are designed to work in a small group–playdate, anyone?
What fun family stuff do you do that involves math?
A basic lifestyle-family-math kind of thing is simply involving your kids in the kitchen. Measuring half-cups and converting recipes (the recipe calls for 2/3 of a cup and I need to double it), converting teaspoons to tablespoons, dividing a 2-cup pound of butter into 1/3 cup or 1/4 cup or whatever. Weighing on a kitchen scale. Calculating the area of your baking pan to see if it will be the right size for your doubled recipe.
With my toddler, her math involvement in the kitchen is much more basic — counting 3 eggs, or 4 cups of flour. “We’ve put in 3 cups, how many more do we need?” gives early addition/subtraction awareness. As she gets older, she’ll be able to do the more advanced stuff too.
A while back I came across a book I think is so great – it’s a list of children’s story books that also teach math concepts, so you can foster reading and math at the same time. It’s “Math Through Children’s Literature” by Braddon/Hall/Taylor. It was actually developed for teachers so it organizes all of its suggestions by grade level and according to which math standards it helps to teach. But what I love about it is that, as parents we’re well aware of the importance of early reading with our kids, but less attuned to the equal importance of early math literacy. So this book gave me a chance to incorporate both into our evening family routine. I confess I have a bias about this, as I work for a math learning company. I’d also like to mention that DreamBox Learning, where I work, gives parents a lot of ideas and tips for bringing math fun into everyday life on our site (http://www.dreambox.com/parent_tips) and our blog (http://www.dreambox.com/blog/category/parent-tips/). And parents can get free printables, like the Math Growth Chart, which helps parents understand cognitive development and the math concepts their child should be learning from ages 4-8 (http://www.dreambox.com/parents). Thank you for a great post, and I look forward to reading additional comments!
Great list! Some other good resources:
- the “Family Math” series of books developed by the Lawrence Hall of Science.
-the “MathStart” series of picture books by Stuart J. Murphy (check the library, mine has tons of them).
-the “Sir Cumference” series of books
by Cindy Neuschwander.
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