Ideas for Maths at Home
(from Ministry of Education)
Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns
Help your child:
- count forwards and backwards (starting with numbers like these fractions: ¼ , ½ , ¾ , 1, 1¼ , 1½ then back again)
- talk about large numbers in your environment e.g., computer game scores, distances
- talk about the phases of the moon and link these to the best times for fishing/planting
- talk about the patterns in the night sky – summer and winter. What changes and why?
- talk about graphs and tables that are in your local newspapers.
Here's a tip - being positive about maths is really important for your child’s learning – even if you didn’t enjoy it or do well at it yourself at school.
Use easy, everyday activities
Involve your child in:
- making dinner at home, at camp or on a marae – look at how many and how much is needed for the people eating (potatoes, bok choy, carrots, sausages). Talk about fractions (half, quarter, fourth) to calculate how much to cook and cooking times
- helping at the supermarket – look for the best buy between different brands of the same item and different sizes of the same item (e.g., toilet paper, cans of spaghetti, bottles of milk)
- looking at the nutrition table on food labels – how much fat, sugar, salt - and deciding on the healthiest choice
- practising times tables – check with your child or their teacher which tables you could help them with.
For wet afternoons/school holidays/weekends
Get together with your child and:
- play card and board games using guessing and checking
- cook – make a pizza, working out who likes what toppings, making and cooking it, and making sure the pizza is shared fairly – make a paper or cardboard container to hold a piece of pizza to take for lunch
- mix a drink for the family – measuring cordial, fruit and water
- make kites or manu aute using a variety of shapes and materials. How high can it go, how long can it fly for?
- make a family/whānau tree or whakapapa – number of cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents and their relationships to you
- plan out the holidays. Look at each day’s fun time, kai time, TV time, helping time, family time and bedtime
- plan to make bead necklaces and friendship bracelets – calculate the cost of the materials, the length of stringing material
- play outdoor games – frisbee, touch rugby, kilikiti, cricket, soccer, bowls
- do complicated jigsaw puzzles
- go on scavenger hunts – make a map with clues and see who can get there first.
Here's some tips -
mathematics is an important part of everyday life and there are lots of ways you can make it fun for your child.
The way your child is learning to solve mathematics problems may be different to when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.