“I’m bored…”
The dreaded words every parent hates to hear.
These days it is all too easy to use screens to occupy our children however we don’t want this to be the only thing they do. Hopefully, this series of journal entries will give you some ideas of educational (yet fun) activities for your children to do whilst at home.
I have grouped the activities into school subjects (Maths, English, Geography, History, Science, Art, Music & PE) and will be posting a new entry each day for 6 days. Some activities will require adult supervision and/or support while others can be completed independently. Most of these activities can be adapted to suit different age groups.
Today we’ll be starting with Maths.
Time – Regularly ask your child to tell you the time throughout the day so that they can practise this skill. Depending on the age and ability of your child, use different types of clocks (analogue, digital, roman numerals, 24-hour etc). It is also good practice to ask them to calculate the duration or end times of films or television programmes.
Shopping List – Using the flyers that come through your door or old Argos catalogues, you could give your child a shopping list and they must find the items and their prices before calculating the total cost. Another idea is to set them a budget and task them with finding supplies for a given situation (e.g. a party, redecorating a room, a BBQ) whilst sticking to the agreed budget.
Board Games – Play board games as a family; many have mathematical aspects such as adding money, totalling dice scores, logical thinking etc. They are also a great way to spend time together and encourage good sportsmanship. Another idea is to ask your child to design and create their own board game which you could later play with them. Their board game could be related to maths problems.
Collecting Data – There are many options when it comes to data collection. Your child could tally the number of cars that go past of different colours. They could go out in the garden and record how many of each type of mini-beast they can find. They could record the temperature at different points throughout the day. With this data, they can then practise plotting a graph or a bar chart.
Times Tables – To practise recalling multiplication and division facts, give children containers with different items inside (e.g. a box of pencils, a bag of potatoes) then ask them different questions. For example, “There are 8 potatoes in this bag, how many potatoes would there be in 7 bags?” Or, “There are 12 pencils in this box, how many boxes would I need if I wanted 60 pencils?” Although the calculations are the same as simply writing ‘7 x 8 =’ or ’60 ÷ 5 =’, these type of questions encourage children to think about calculations in real-life situations, which in turn will help them to solve word problems that they may come across at school. Word problems are often something that children find tricky.
Cooking – Involve your children when you are cooking. Ask them to measure out ingredients with scales or measuring jugs. This is excellent real-life practice for them.
Fractions – Fractions are a great mathematical topic to discuss when preparing food. This could be when you are slicing a pizza or a cake, sharing a bag of sweets or cutting sandwiches. Read my Pizza Fractions lesson plan for more ideas.
Shapes – Task your child with finding different items around the house that are different 3D shapes such as cylinders, cuboids, pyramids, cones, cubes, triangular prisms etc.
Thanks for reading. I hope some of these suggestions have been useful. If you have any further ideas for maths activities, please get involved in the discussion by clicking the button below.
Please check back tomorrow for History & Geography activities. ?
