Make Summer Count

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 By: Sheri ArbitalJacoby <!--[endif]-->

My mom was the sort to mentally compute the total for all four of her kids’ back-to-school gear before the cash register did. And I’m pretty good at guestimating tabs, too (I always review receipts and typically find errors). Certainly, math is a part of everyday life, but in this age of graphing calculators and computers that do everything for us, how do we show kids how to connect math to the life they lead? 

 

“Kids don’t get the connection of math to the real world,” says Glen Whitney, PhD, president of Math Factory, Inc., which will be touring math exhibits nationwide beginning this fall (mathmidway.org) and in 2011 will open the country’s only museum of mathematics in New York. “But when parents give their children the chance to see the connection, math becomes more natural,” notes Dr. Whitney, a former college math professor who now coaches the Mount Elementary School Math Club in Stony Brook, NY and offers engaging ways to help your kids apply math to real life and reinforce the skills they learned in school.

Pack it in.

To help your child learn the practical use of geometric shapes, ask him to figure out the best way to fit the most glasses on a shelf. Remind him to notice how the shapes fit together. Then ask him to reorganize a shelf of mugs with handles. How do they fit together to get the most in? Have him explore how turning the handles enables him to fit more. He can learn similar lessons by packing the car trunk for a trip. Or have him organize a box of blocks. 

Hunt for shapes. Look for basic shapes in everyday life and point out how each serves a useful function: equilateral triangles and circles in buildings, semicircles in arches and parabolas on bridges. Why is the shape of the nut on fire hydrants so unusual? Firemen have special tools for accessing hydrants. And why are manhole covers round? So they can’t be put on the wrong way and fall in!

Shop by the numbers. At the grocery store, have your kids estimate how much the total bill will cost, adding and subtracting items as you fill your cart. Make a game of it—the child with the closest guess wins a treat.


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