Home Learning Maths Ideas for the Summer Holidays!

It is widely believed that children can lose up to 2 months worth of learning during the summer holidays. This is sometimes referred to as summer learning loss.  It is believed to happen when children stop practising the skills they have learned and therefore forget or lose these skills. This can happen in all areas of the curriculum but there is a way to prevent it, by continuing to practise these skills over the summer.  It can be hard to get children motivated and encouraged to work on school subjects in the holidays so here at My Primary Tutor, we have come up with some ideas to make maths at home fun and engaging.  Here are our top 5 ways to learn maths at home this summer.

Make a meal

Cooking or baking are both great ways to work and develop children's practical maths skills.  From going to the shop to buy the ingredients and working out the cost while sticking to a budget, to following the steps in the recipe and measuring out the ingredients correctly, it all involves maths.  The recipe doesn't need to be complicated, even making something as simple as chocolate crispy cakes would use all these skills and more.  Try to think of questions to ask during the process that helps them engage with the maths elements and shows their thinking and understanding....."Do we have enough money to buy 3 bars of chocolate? How much would that cost?"  "The recipe makes 12 crispy cakes.  What would we do if we want to make 24 cakes?  Or 6 cakes?" Try to tailor your questions to your child's age and stage and if you have children of different ages, get them to help each other.  The best bit about this kind of task is they get to tuck in and eat what they have made at the end!  What better motivation do you need?

Play a game

Board games are great for children to practise their maths skills, often without realising it.  Many board games involve counting, sharing, adding and subtracting which are all important maths skills.  Games involving playing cards or dice can be useful too for working on these skills.  You could even get your child to design and create their own board games.  You can find free board game templates to print online.

Plan a day trip

We often take for granted as adults the maths involved in planning a trip or visiting somewhere as a family.  However, it can be really valuable for children to be involved as it can help them to work on big maths concepts like time and money.  From understanding how to read a timetable and working out how long a journey will take, to calculating the cost of the tickets and refreshments within a set budget, there are so many ways your child can work on their maths skills. If you are going on holiday abroad, working out exchange rates and the cost of things in a foreign country compared to home can be very valuable for older children, and helps them to understand the value of money especially if they have their own money to spend.

Take learning outdoors

It is summer and so hopefully the weather will be nice to get outdoors.  If you have younger children you can use outdoor paints or chalk to get them practising number formation.  If you are out for a walk encourage them to look for different shapes in nature and name them.  Do a scavenger hunt and encourage them to look for a certain number of items -  Can you find 5 green leaves or 3 brown sticks?  Grouping, sorting, ordering and comparing are important for younger children and help them to start to use and understand the language of maths.  

There is an app for that

ICT has greatly improved children's learning and there is no doubt that children enjoy learning online.  There are many educational apps that can help children to practise skills like counting, multiplication facts and telling the time.  One of our favourite apps for maths is Hit the Button.  This can be accessed for free on the Topmarks website but the paid app allows you to remove the timer and gives children the chance to practise without the time pressure.  The app has games for adding and subtracting, multiplication and division.

Need our help?

Keeping learning going during the summer is no easy task - especially not when most of us have to keep a house running and work.  If you need some extra help with your child over the summer, to make sure their learning loss is kept to a minimum, give us a shout at enquiries@myprimarytutoronline.com. We have a long list of satisfied customers and are ready to help in whatever way you need!

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