Math Outside The Classroom

Math is one of those subjects that too often becomes all about worksheets and workbooks. I try really hard to incorporate hands on and real life application activities into our lessons but this can be especially hard when it comes to math. In this post I will share several ways to take math outside the classroom setting.

Grocery Store Trips

Grocery store trips are an easy way for your kids to get math practice in a real life setting. Some activities you can do are:

-Teach your kids how to use and read the scales in the produce department.

- Have your child use the scales to calculate how much your spending on an item.

-Have your child add up the prices of items.

-Have your child calculate the difference in price between two similar items.

-Ask questions like "If we have $10 to spend on bread, how many loaves can we get?" or "which block of cheese is the best deal?"

-Help your child pay the cashier and count out exact change.

-Young children can count or sort items.

Board Games

Board games are fun way to get math practice in and the best part is kids don't even realize they're learning. For real little kids just counting spaces and counting dots on dice can be great practice.

Games with money like Monopoly and Life are great practice for kids learning to count money. Other games that are good for practicing math skills are:

-Rummikub

-Yahtzee

-Rack-o

-Qwirckle

-Connect 4

-Sequence Numbers

-Sumoko

In The Kitchen

Cooking and baking projects are one of my favorite ways to get in extra math practice. Here are a few ways you can use math in the kitchen:

-Teach your kids how to measure ingredients.

-Teach your kids how to read amounts in a recipe.

-Have your kids double or halve recipes. This is great for fraction practice.

-Have your children plan a meal, make a grocery list, and calculate the cost.

-Use pies or cakes or round loaves of bread as a fraction demonstration.

-Young children can count and sort items like canned food, mixed dried beans, etc....

STEM Challenges

STEM challenges are always a fun way to get in some mathmatics practice. Here are links to instructions for a few of my favorite mathematical STEM activities:

-Measurement STEM Lab from The Barefoot Mom

-Geometric Shapes Activity from Little Bins For Little Hands

-Toothpick Gumdrop Geometry from The Barefoot Mom

-Math Fact Dominoes from From Playdough To Plato

-2D Shape Hunt from From Playdough To Plato

-Angles Art from In The Playroom

-Fibonacci Art Project from What We Do All Day

-Origami Friendship Math Quilts from Pink Stripey Socks

-Kinetic Sand Math from Left Brain Craft Brain

Apps And YouTube Channels

Another fun way to get in some math practice is with math apps, online games, and YouTube videos. Here are a few of my family's favorites:

Mathmagics- Mental Math Tricks is an app that helps kids with mental math skills. It teaches lots of neat math tricks.

Mathmateer is a fun math app for elementary aged kids.

Math Playground is another fun app for early elementary aged kids.

Starfall is an awesome learning site with lots of fun math and reading games.

Numberphile is a neat YouTube channel and all episodes are number and math related.

Math Antics a great YouTube channel for elementary aged kids.

If you enjoyed this post, check out:
-Hands On Fractions
-Aluminum Foil Boat STEM Activity
-Toothpick Gumdrop Geometry

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