Math Activities to Prevent Summer Slide in Kids

Many kids dread math. They look forward to summer vacation because they can stay away from the subject for a long time. Summer holidays bring about lethargy in kids and they are reluctant to practice anything that’s got anything to do with math. Here are a few carefully thought out math activities for kids that can actually make their summer holidays brighter, and break their math-jinx!

Photo by: Tax Credits

Ideas for math activities:

Budget game

Summer is all about fun at the beach and sudden day outings. Share a budget with your kids and allow them to plan the outings; food, supplies, fuel, etc. If you have older kids, give them goals based on nutrition, such as grams of protein, total calories, etc. 

Pots of gold

This is a fun math activity that you can plan on any birthday party or kids’ day in. Stuff a number of pots with sand and hide equal number of cents in all of them. Hand over the pots to the kids and instruct them to scour through the sand and find all the cents and dimes hidden in it. Then, have them count the total amount of coins that they could find in the pots. Some kids might not find all the coins while some may just manage to find all!

Number plate counting

We’ve all played math activities with car number plates as kids. Here are a number of them that you can play with the kids:

• Rearrange the numbers on the plate to make the largest three-digit number possible.
• Rearrange the numbers on the plate to make the smallest three-digit number possible.
• Add all the numbers up.
• Subtract the second number from the first, and then the third number from the answer (answers might be in negative).
• Combine math skills: add the first two numbers and subtract the third number from its result, or multiply the first two numbers and add the third to the result, etc.

Planning groceries

Share your monthly groceries list with your kids. Instruct them to look for coupons and offers on the items you plan to buy. Have them subtract the discounted prices from the original prices and calculate the total savings for the month. Example, if the original price of a jar of jam costs $5 and its discounted price is $3, then the saving will be $2. You can encourage the kids further by buying them a gift worth the saving amount. 

Patterning groceries

This is an activity for preschool kids. As you put away your groceries, have the toddlers sort them out by their patterns into groups of: bottles and jars, items in brown paper packages, carton packed items, and items  that cannot be grouped (like round shoe polish boxes, pouches of sugar, etc.)

Think out of the box and try to make a math activity out of regular tasks and events such as the sunrise, going to bed, planning trips, study time, etc. Have fun with the kids during their holidays and keep summer slide in check.