math at home

[jessaroo]

HI,

What sorts of math activities do you do at home to support your child? My dd is in 2nd grade and I would like to really start bringing learning home to give her better support.  I created a math bingo so far.

[rumsmyname]

An easy way we have found is to have them help cook....read the recipe, measure and follow the directions.  I would add "sometimes I double the recipe.  How much of each item would I need?"  We have played very silly games of someone tall is coming to visit and they like to sit with all the friends they bring.  Children are asked to go find all the chairs and measure how tall they are.  This is followed by putting the numbers in a table.  It is a fun activity they can do by themself until creating the table.  There all kinds of things to send off to count, measure, categorize and ???  We have even shot paper wads off plastic spoons, measure how far they go and then compare the distances.  I guess the approach that works well and is naturally occurring as opposed to forced learning involves hands on activities.

My kids also enjoyed playing some of the math software games which reinforce all kinds of math concepts.  Jumpstart 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade... the zoo zillion series (have to look at levels appropriate), plus there are some cool math fact practice game type sites.  My 3rd grader has fun with math facts under arithmetic here:   http://www.coolmath.com/0-math-help-lessons.html