Are you looking for ways to get the whole family involved in learning this holiday season? Incorporating math into your festivities can be a great way to make the holidays educational and enjoyable!
Math activities don’t have to feel like homework – by using creative ideas, math can help create cherished memories. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to use mathematics in fun and engaging ways during the holidays. From making homemade baked goods together as a family to counting coins with little ones at an annual charity event, there are many opportunities to bring a mathematical twist around the holiday season! Having fun and incorporating math operations into your holidays can be easy.
Making Math Fun!
Math doesn’t have to be a bore! In fact, math lessons can quickly become enjoyable when presented in an interactive and stimulating way – especially over the holidays. Children are more likely to immerse themselves in math exercises when learning is playful – from counting games that use physical objects such as paper clips or coins to board games and apps designed specifically for math practice.
During the holidays, children will want to participate in holiday-themed games or even chores around the house if they are made to be interesting. Turning math into an entertaining activity will spark curiosity among kids and help improve their math skills while they become engaged in the challenge.
Christmas Baking
Baking is a great way to keep math learning alive during the holidays, especially for kids. It provides an opportunity to reinforce math operations such as measurements, fractions, geometry and more in a fun and stress-free environment. Math skills help in measuring ingredients, but math can also be used to double or halve recipes. Furthermore, math concepts such as fractions, ratios and symmetry can all be practiced when decorating the finished product, from making enough icing for your gingerbread cookies to evenly spacing pieces of fruitcake.
The relationship between the ingredients in a recipe can be easily shown to a child as a ratio. As an example, if a cookie recipe calls for two eggs and one cup of sugar, the ratio of sugar to eggs is 1 to 2.
Since recipes list ingredients in proportion, you can teach your child that if you increase or decrease the amount of one ingredient, you must increase or decrease the others by the same factor to produce the desired result.
Cooking a big dinner for family and friends? Ask your child to help you double a recipe to ensure that no one goes hungry. Or, if someone cancels, have them help you decrease the number of ingredients needed to feed everyone.
Baking/cooking together can also be a great bonding experience that encourages children to practice math topics while creating something delicious with family or friends! It can help boost their confidence when family members comment on their tasty creations and help them understand how math can be fun and rewarding.
With some careful recipe selection, math practice can easily be integrated into holiday celebrations with little effort.
Wrapping Gifts
During the holidays, when it’s time to wrap presents for family members and friends, take full advantage of the opportunity to help your child improve their math skills. Have your child involved in cutting and measuring wrapping paper, estimating how much each present may require, counting out the number of gifts being wrapped, and carefully following directions. In doing so, kids are applying math concepts such as measurements, addition/subtraction, geometry and problem-solving. Plus, they will feel empowered and proud of helping you! So the next time you tackle those Christmas gifts, consider incorporating math learning with an activity your child will love to be a part of.
The Joy of Gift Giving
Gift-giving can be an excellent way for students to learn math in practice. Allowing children to use their own money for holiday purchases requires them to use various math skills, such as decimals, percentages, and averages. Not only does this help them become better at math, but it also teaches them the vital lesson that in order to get something they want, they have to set a budget and determine what is important enough to buy within it. As parents, it is empowering to witness our children take charge of their finances while learning math along the way!
Playing Games
Instead of only playing traditional board games or video games this year, why not try math-based activities? Math-based games provide a fun way for your kids to practice math concepts such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division – all while having lots of holiday cheer. Furthermore, math can even be sneakily included in puzzles and other popular games; in this way, math becomes less intimidating but still provides an effective learning opportunity. Playing math-based games over the holidays can be a great way for your children to stay mentally and physically active.
Keep Learning Over The Holidays
The holiday season is a great time to take a break and relax, but that doesn’t mean math should be put on the back burner. During the festive winter holidays, children should take advantage of the time off from school to continue their math learning and practice. With no school days or homework to worry about, math can be incorporated into family activities and daily life in subtle ways, such as baking or playing math-related games with siblings. Math skills remain sharp by keeping problem-solving and number-crunching fresh during the holidays, so nothing is lost over the break.
Classes Starting In January!
Dropkick Math Academy will be taking a short break for the holiday season, but we’re eager to get back into math action in January. Our math programs provide opportunities for kids of all ages to create math mastery that allows them to understand math on a deeper level. Our math intervention programs allow students to better their math skills every day, and we can’t wait to continue our work in the New Year.
If you were planning on searching the web for “math tutor near me” in the new year, look no further. Dropkick Math Academy is an alternative to traditional math tutors that helps children get to the root cause of their math misunderstandings. Learn more about our programs and how we can help boost your child’s confidence in mathematics this year!
