Want to make your kids more math savvy every day of the year? Check out these booklists & activity suggestions courtesy of whatdowedoallday.com:
www.whatdowedoallday.com/2015/01/math-books-for-babies-and-toddlers.html The toddler set is focusing on pattern learning, relative sizes and pairing. Their attention span for lap-sitting and reading is also very short. Focus on books with engaging, happy and simple text and bold, pattern-oriented illustrations. Just remember, your baby and toddler does not need how to learn to add and subtract! More ideas 10 ways to make math fun for babies and toddlers!
www.whatdowedoallday.com/2015/02/math-books-preschoolers.html In no way is there a dearth of counting, shape and pattern books for preschoolers. This book list is a great way to start, but is by no means exhaustive! Once you start looking at the library you will easily find many more to add to your reading list. For more on easy and fun hands-on activities to encourage your young children to love math, read 7 Simple Math Activities for Preschool at The Measured Mom.
www.whatdowedoallday.com/2015/02/math-picture-books.html -- math books that incorporate concepts into engaging stories, or books that challenge kids to see math in the natural world around them rather than “math teaching books.” More age appropriate math activities from The Measured Mom that will help your kids develop a love of math from the get-go!
www.whatdowedoallday.com/2015/03/advanced-concept-math-picture-books.html These math picture books look at a wide variety of more advanced concepts, from fractals to factorials. They are good for the upper elementary grades and even up to age 12. And here are some more ideas on how to make math fun for 8 to 12 year olds.
Add math to your nature walks – see if their patterns in flowers, leaves, pine cones etc. adhere to the sequence and try out an open-ended Fibonacci art project!
Math chapter books and story collections where mathematical concepts play a crucial part of the story. They are excellent tools for cross-curriculum learning. Best of all, even if your child’s favorite subject in school is art or drama or history, all of the books make math accessible and tell a good story. (And by the way, if your kid loves art, try one of these amazing math art projects for kids.)
More great ideas: https://www.whatdowedoallday.com/math-art-books
whatdowedoallday.com also offers more than 200 other great booklists on myriad topics!
Looking for a fun way to make math part of your family’s daily activities? bedtimemath.org offers fun and interesting daily math problems -- 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Here’s an example:
SHOOTING-STAR SKYDIVERS
Skydiving is one of the craziest sports out there. You jump out of a plane thousands of feet up in the sky, fall at over 100 miles an hour, then pull your “parachute” to slow you down to land. But if LOTS of skydivers jump at once, they can grab each other’s arms to link up and make pictures in the sky. These 164 skydivers hold the world record for the biggest crowd dive, jumping out of 7 planes over Chicago. If you watchthe video, you see how they steered themselves to fall faster or slower to meet each other in the sky. Some fell as fast as 175 miles an hour! They planned out the design down on the ground, then figured out who should grab whom…after all, some divers have a stronger right or left hand, and some dive faster than others. Their totally awesome star shape broke the record of 100 group divers — and everyone’s parachute worked!
Wee ones: How many points does the skydiver star shape have? Remember where you started counting!
Little kids: If 4 people grab hands, and they need 6 in total to make a loop, how many more divers need to join them? Bonus: The group’s very first dive had just 18 people. If you had gotten to be one of them, how many skydivers would have jumped with you?
Big kids: The old record had 100 people jump in a square. How many more divers did this group have? Bonus: If 12 of the 164 had made a center circle, and the rest of the divers had fanned out to make 8 equal chains, how many divers would have made each chain? (Hint if needed: 8 is 2 x 2 x 2, so to divide by 8, just cut in half 3 times in a row!)
Click HERE for the answers.
Maker Program: Emily Roebling Builds a Bridge–A Hands-On Program for Exploring Bridge Building and Encouraging Women in Engineering
