Summer Math Activities for Elementary Students

Are you wondering how you can help your child with mathematics over the summer? Well, whether your child is struggling with mathematics or not, I really feel it’s important that we keep up the academics throughout the summer.

Not just math, reading’s important, as well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in letting kids play, but some of their play activities can also be including academic things.

This topic was prompted because a friend of ours got a hold of me because he was looking on my website, wanting to get some activities to help his daughter with math over the summer. And I really don't have anything because a lot of what I do, the majority of it is geared towards classroom teachers, not so much for parents. But I am a mother of four young kiddos, ranging in age from preschool to fourth grade and there are a lot of math-y things that I do with them that I would love to be able to share with other parents.

Before I dig into my top activities, I really want you to understand my general philosophy. I do not believe that kids need to be working on specific math content throughout the summer, like giving them a bunch of worksheets during the summer and having them work on those. That is not my philosophy in a general classroom and so I would not recommend that for you to do over the summer with your students. However, if your child's teacher has said they are needing extra work in a specific area, then yes, then you can focus on that content area. But I also still don't believe it needs to be worksheet-based.

My whole philosophy and what I'm gonna be sharing with you is providing your child with mathematical experiences, showing them math in their lives, not just sitting down and doing math on a worksheet. That makes it number one, not fun, and it doesn't really apply to them. They're already maybe not wanting to do math and then when we just do it in a not very fun way, they're not gonna want to continue doing it.

So let's make it fun, okay? So here are my top four summer activities that you can be doing for mathematics.

Puzzles

Yes, puzzles. I don't care how young, how old you are, puzzles are wonderful at building your mathematical mind. There is a lot of research that shows links between our ability to spatially reason and manipulating shapes and the link to how we perform in mathematics.

Getting your child involved with lots of puzzles, having to figure out what shape goes where, some critical thinking skills about where do you start first in a puzzle, what makes sense? What do you notice that's the same? What do you notice that's different about the puzzle pieces? All of that will build their mind that helps them in their mathematical world, as well.

Games

Number two is just playing games. If you have seen any of my videos, I probably mention this all the time, I come from a game playing family and I love playing games with my own kids. Whether it is dominoes or a dice game, like playing Yahtzee, or if you're just playing card games, right?

Regular card games are great but I also have a template for what I call the Savvy Subitizing cards and even older kids love these cards because it's not just the number one, but it shows six different visual pictures of what one looks like and what two looks like. When you're playing the normal like Go Fish or any games that you play with a deck of cards, doing it with Savvy Subitizing cards just adds an extra layer that even for your older kids creates a different twist and even for us adults it's fun to play with those cards.

Get a free download of Savvy Subitizing Cards HERE to make your own or you can purchase sets HERE.

So card games, dice games, dominoes, just play games with the kids. Even board games.

One of my favorite board games that also builds spatial reasoning is called Blokus and I'll link to it below this video, but it's B-L-O-K-U-S, it's not a C in there, but Blokus is one of the best ones to build spatial reasoning for kids, it's an amazing game, I really love it.

Get Blokus and Blokus Jr.

Purposeful Practice of Math Facts

My third one is a little bit focused on specific mathematical content. Because the number one thing that we tend to see outwardly that makes us worried about whether or not our kid is doing well in math, is their ability to know their math facts. I want to encourage you that if you're wondering you know, does my kid know their facts? It's not just about being able to really quickly tell you what three plus four is or three times four, right? I do want my kids, my personal kids, I want them fast with their facts. But I want to encourage you to do some purposeful practice with your child, if you feel like they're struggling with their math facts.

Here's a little image of your standards. I shouldn't say your standards, because each state has different standards, each country has different standards, so this is one example, your specific state might look a little different.

But as you can see, kindergarten through second grade, the emphasis is on building their understanding in fluency with addition and subtraction up to about 20, right? You can see ones where they're just up to 18, but the real emphasis by the end of second grade is to be able to add or subtract anything that's zero through 10, plus or minus zero through 10.

As you can see, each grade level has a part, it's not like just second grade, all of it happens. If you've got a kindergartner and they don't know what seven plus eight is, that's okay, that's not their level of understanding right now.

I want to show you a little chart.

This chart is showing the addition facts colored because there are certain types of facts that students gravitate towards. You don’t need to have your kid work on your plus ones and your plus twos and your plus threes. Have them work on these types of facts. You also don’t need to share this chart with your child, this is a chart for adults to understand which ones kids gravitate towards and then how we can use those to help them with the ones that they aren't understanding right now.

Let's say that I’m working with my son and I ask, “What's three plus four?” And he ends up counting on his fingers to do three plus four. Well, then I might look at this chart and look at three plus four and I notice that it's connected, it's the same coloring scheme here, three plus four is a light orange, whereas three plus three is a dark orange that dark orange, three plus three is the doubles. And kids gravitate towards their doubles more than they do other facts. So if my child is struggling with three plus four, I first want to see do they know three plus three and then help them see the connection to three plus four from that. If you're noticing that your kid is struggling, try to figure out which ones they're struggling with and then look to see which of these is it connected to?

If my child was struggling with seven plus four and I saw them counting on their fingers to do seven plus four. I might say, "Bud, do you know seven plus three?” And if he knew that one instantly, “Okay, so seven plus three is 10, how does seven plus four connect to seven plus three? What do you notice that's the same? What do you notice that's different?” I'm still working on the fact of seven plus four but I'm helping him see connections.

That's one of the coolest parts about mathematics is that everything is connected. And too often, your child might see mathematics as isolated skills or things that they need to memorize. The more that you can help them to see connections, the better off that they will be.

So use this chart, you can click the image, save it to your computer and just bring it up and if your kid's struggling with one of these facts, find where it is on the chart and then look to see what one is near it that might be helpful and help them see the connections.

The same thing holds true for multiplication.

Now, here is the weird thing. Again, depending upon your state, yours might look a little different, but our state, kids are first introduced to multiplication pretty much in third grade and they're expected to know all of their multiplication and division facts by the end of third grade which pretty much kids do not actually get to that point. So all of third, fourth and fifth grade, teachers are always constantly working on trying to get kids to have fact fluency.

Here's a little side note that I didn't mention but I talk to teachers a lot about this. Fluency does not just mean they know it instantly. Fluently means that yes, you're accurate and your are fast, but you also have flexibility. If they don't just instantly know it, do they have a way to figure it out? And too often, the way that they figure it out is by counting on their fingers which is not an efficient strategy. So helping kids see these connections helps build their flexibility, so that if they don't just instantly know it, they have a way to figure it out that doesn't take forever, like counting on their fingers.

When it comes to multiplication, I have the same colored chart here, but it's a different type of facts.

In multiplication, those purple ones are the ones that are you just the properties, like anything times zero is zero. Anything times one is the number you're multiplying by. But it's not just to memorize those, we really want kids to understand why is it that when you multiply by zero you get nothing? Why does that happen? Why is it that when we multiply by one, you always get the other number? What does it mean? Then the green ones are the times two which is basically you're doubling the amount. And then the reds are times 10, and then the blue is times fives. Those ones kids gravitate towards more so than any other. Kids will memorize those quickly, they'll have quicker recall of those, and then the goal is to connect those together.

If my child is struggling with times fours, I might start off with doing something with their times twos so I might say, "Okay, what is two groups of three?" And then they'll tell me, "Okay, it's six." Or two times three is also known as two groups of three. So they'll say it's six. Then I'll go, "Okay, what's four groups of three?" And I'm wanting them to see the connection of how I just doubled the number of groups so now my answer doubles. So all of this is about connections. How is times four connected to times two? They are the lighter green ones but how are they connected? Same thing with the blue ones, the lighter blue ones are connected to the multiplying by five. If you know your multiplying by 10 facts, that helps you know your multiplying by nine and multiplying by eight facts.

Download those charts, just click on them and you can save that, you can download the image to your computer, use them for your own knowledge to be thinking about ways to build connections for your child as they're trying to work on their facts over the summer. Because that is one of the biggest pieces that causes kids to struggle because if they aren't quick with their facts, a lot of times that impacts the other mathematics that they're doing in a classroom.

Create A Store

All right, now the last one that I wanna share with you is to have your child create a store. I swear, every summer, my kids do some kind of a store. Whether it's creating a lemonade stand out in front of your house and having them sell a couple lemonades for 25 cents, even though it may cost more than that to make it, but the idea is that they get that idea of getting 25 cents and talking about how much that is and when they have to count up their money at the end of the day to see how much they made, all of the mathematics that goes into that and giving change back.

Let’s say they're selling it for a quarter but somebody gives them a dollar. That idea of having to do the exchange and give change back is huge, right?

I've even had my kids have done the local farmers' market. Here is an image of them quite a few years ago, they look so young here, but it was back when those rubber band bracelets were a big thing and they sat around and would make those rubber band bracelets and then every week, we would take them down to the farmers' market and sell those and sell water, as well, because it was stinking hot and everybody would want water, so water was actually like our bestseller.

But they got that experience of selling stuff. If you don't feel comfortable having them sell stuff out somewhere else, last summer, my kids just created their own store in the house and took all of their toys and were selling them to each other. They were totally making wild amounts, like $50 for a nerf gun arrow. And so we had to have those kinds of discussions about is that even realistic? Would somebody pay that much for that? Can your brothers and sisters pay you that much? So all of those experiences will help them.

The big thing I want you to take away from this video is just provide experiences, help your child see mathematics in the world around them. Then when they go back to school, they will start to see that need for wanting to learn math. If they see the subject is not connected to them, they don't need it, they don't see why it's important, then they won't want to learn it. If you can instill that love of math and the love of seeing how it helps them in their life, then they will be more likely to want to learn it when they get back into school.

I hope that this has helped you parents build your math mind so that you can help build the math mind of your children this summer.