How Can I Include Math In My Child's Summer?
Use the activites below to maintain and enhance your child's math skills. Sign your initials by each activity your child finishes or
tries for at least 15 minutes. At the end of the summer send this form to your child's teacher to show your child's work.
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Suggested summer math activities for students entering 8th grade
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Have your child decide whether they will get a better crust per pizza ratio on a circular or rectangular pizza.
Ask your child to find out: At what rate do their nails grow? How often do they cut them? How much do they cut off? How much do they
grow in one month? In one day?
Have your child cook or bake, measuring the ingredients, adding and subtracting fractions (Example: 3/4 cup of water can be measured with
a 1/4 cup and a 1/2 cup).
Have your child solve Sudoku logic puzzles (these can be found in a newspaper).
Have your child find out: How many people have to attend a school to be sure that at least two people have the same first and last initials?
(How many different combinations of initials are possible?) How many to be sure all three initials are the same?
Ask your child to find out: What is their monthly growth rate? In a day? If you have their height marked on a wall, they can use that to find out,
otherwise let them use pictures or some other method to estimate how tall they were in the past.
Have your child find the new price of an item that is on sale for a certain percent off (Example: Tennis shoes regularly priced $50 on sale for
30% off are $35.).
Ask your child to find out: How well does reality match probability? Roll a die/dice 60 times. How often do they expect to roll a 2? How often
do they actually roll a 2?
Have your child find the percentage off for an item that is on sale (Example: Tennis shoes regularly priced $50 are selling for $35, so they are
30% off.).
Have your child make plans to rearrange one of the rooms in your home. Measure the room and draw the floor layout on a sheet of graph
paper with the side-length of a square representing 6 inches. Measure the furniture and create cut-outs the appropriate size to represent
them. Use this scale drawing to decide on a layout before moving anything.
Ask your child to find out: What sum are they likely to get when rolling two dice (one red, one white)? Make a table showing the 6 possibilities
for white across the top and the 6 possibilities for red on the side. Fill the sums in the table. How many of the 36 ways produce 2? 4? 7? 12?
Have your child find out how many times they can shoot a basket in a minute. Either go to a basketball court, or shoot balls into a
wastebasket. Time them for one minute. Repeat several times, recording the results. How much variation is in the scores?
Have your child find out: How much water does your toilet flush? Open the tank in the back and measure the surface area and depth of the
water in centimeters. (1 cubic centimeter = 1 milliliter; 1000 milliliters = 1 liter)
Play Crazy Eights (or Uno ) with your child (deal 8 cards to each player and flip one card from the deck over, go clockwise, each player plays a
card matching the suit or number, or draws until they can do so, eights are wild, first one out of cards wins).
Have your child find out: When is the next time the calendar will repeat the current day/date combination? (Example: if it is Sunday, June 2nd,
2013, In what year will the next Sunday, June 2nd occur? Think about rules for leap years, days of the week, and days of the year.)
Have your child find out: How much faster is the world's fastest car than they are? The fastest street legal car can go 267 miles an hour. How
many times faster is this than their walking speed? Their running speed?
While traveling, ask your child to find out: How common are different types of vehicles? Have them make a table, then look out the window,
and keep track for a hundred cars that they see. How many are sedans? SUVs? Trucks? Buses? Vans? What percent of vehicles do you
think fall into each category?
Ask your child to calculate the distance you'll travel on a trip (long distance or around town) using a scaled map.
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Have your child find the total surface area of the wood flooring, carpeting, tile, or linoleum in your home.
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Have your child find out: How long are the words in their favorite book? (average a random sample of the words to find out)
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Have your child figure out the best deal at a pizza chain (at the restaurant or looking at their menu) by calculating the $ per square inch rate of
each pizza.
Ask your child to determine: How likely is it that someone will win a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors? Make a three by three table with rows
representing which sign you use and columns representing which sign the opponent uses. What are the odds of winning? Of the opponent
winning? Of neither winning (a tie)?
Let your child break pieces of uncooked spaghetti in two places and try to form a triangle with the three resulting pieces. When does this
work and when is it impossible? Can they make a triangle in more than one way?
Have your child find out how fast their hair grows. How long ago was their last hair cut? How long was their hair then? How long is it now?
What is their hair's daily growth rate?
Give your child a carrot (cone-like), an apple (sphere-like), and the middle third of a banana (cylinder-like). Cut through these shapes and
discuss what cross-sections you get. Can they make a circle? A triangle? A rectangle? An ellipse?
Play a game of Greedy Pig with your child. In each round, roll a die/dice and let each player write down the number. At any point in a round a
player can bank their points and quit the round. The round continues until all players bank or until a 6 is rolled. Any player still in the round
when a 6 is rolled loses all their points for that round. Most points after 8 rounds wins. Encourage them to think about the probability that a 6
is rolled.
Make a spinner with your child. What do they think the probability that the spinner lands in each section is? Have them spin the spinner 50
times and record their results. How does this compare with their guesses about the probabilities?
Have your child estimate how many toothpicks could be made from a telephone pole.
Have your child make a prediction about how often an object (such as a bottle cap, paper or plastic cup, toy, etc.) will land a certain way if it
is tossed 50 times. Have them do the experiment to find out.
How Can I Include Math In My Child's Summer?
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Suggested summer math activities for students entering 8th grade
Have your child work out the sales tax on a purchase on paper before ringing it up.
Challenge your child to find out their free throw shooting percentage. Have them shoot ten free throws (or shoot balled up paper at a
wastebasket) and record how many they get in. Predict how many they will get out of the next 20 shots.
Have your child find the surface area needed to paint a room in your home.
Have your child find out: What are the odds of winning the Powerball (or similar lottery)?
Have your child compare the lengths of words in a children's book and an adult book by randomly sampling 25 words from each book. Have
them compare their results by showing them in a dot plot.
While traveling, ask your child to find out: How common are different colors of vehicles? Have them build a table to record their results, then
look out the window and keep track for a hundred cars they see. What percent of vehicles are each color?
While shopping, have your child find the better deal by comparing unit prices of two foods.
Have your child estimate how long it would take to fill your bathtub if it leaks at a rate of 1 drip every 2 seconds.
Ask your child to find out: What day of the week were they born on? Have them think about the rules for leap years, days in a year, and days
in a week.
Cook or bake with your child, changing the amount of the recipe by a fractional amount (Example: Make a batch of cookies 50% larger than
the original. 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chip cookies times 3/2 is 2 1/4 cups).
Have your child find out: What is the volume of your home?
Ask your child to find out: If they were going to carpet their room with either nickels or one dollar bills, which would be the cheapest option?
Which would be have the highest money to area ratio?
Have your child make a map of your neighborhood.
Have your child find out: How long is the World's Largest Pencil? The eraser is almost 3 feet wide. The dimensions are proportional to a
standard #2 pencil (the length divided by the width is the same in both cases).
Today, (Day 1 of 2), have your child find out: How likely are runs when flipping a coin? Flip a coin 10 times and record your results. Write
down the length of the longest string of heads or the longest string of tails, whichever is larger. Repeat 20 times.
Today, (Day 2 of 2), ask your child to find out: How likely are runs when flipping a coin? Have them graph their coin-flipping results from the
other day. From the graph, how many times matching consecutive flips should you expect when flipping a coin 10 times? What was the most
your child got?
Watch the weather channel with your child, and find out the probability of rain the rest of this week, and discuss the meaning.
Have your child calculate the tax and total cost of an item before purchase.
Play Dice Difference with your child. Two players roll one die/dice each. Subtract the smaller number from the bigger one. If the difference is
0, 1, or 2, player one gets a point. If it is 3, 4, or 5, player two gets a point. Play 10 rounds wins. Is the game fair?
Ask your child to find out: What type candy are they most likely to get? Have them count the different colors of starbursts in a bag of
starbursts, the differently colored m&ms in a bag of m&ms, or the types of animal crackers. If they pick one out at random what are they most
likely to get? What are the odds of getting a red starburst? A lion animal cracker?
Encourage your child to practice asking clarifying questions. When someone else is making a claim or argument, tell them not to argue back.
Instead, encourage them to ask questions that help them understand the other person's view as well as possible.
Have your child estimate how long it would take to wallpaper the Washington Monument (roughly prism shaped, about 555 feet tall, square
base - side length of about 40 feet).
Have your child find out: How wide across is the world's biggest hamburger? The burger is 6 inches thick. Assume the dimensions are
proportional to a standard hamburger (the width divided by the thickness is the same in both burgers).
Play Nobles and Gardeners with your child. Go once through a standard deck of cards. One player looks for face cards and the other looks
for spades. Every round both players flip over one card from the deck. If it is the kind they are looking for they add it to their hand it. The
player with more cards in their hand at the end wins. Does this game seem fair? When you flip over the first card what are the odds of a face
card? Of a spade?
Challenge your child to find out: If they randomly arrange the letters 'A', 'P', 'S', and 'T', how likely are they to make a word? How many ways
can they arrange the letters in total? How many of these arrangements are words? How about with 'O', 'P', 'S', and 'T'?
Have your child estimate how long it would take to paint the Great Pyramid (481 feet tall, square base with a side length of 756 feet, length to
walk straight up one side from the base is 612 feet).
Have your child find out: How long do people sleep? Survey your friends, family, and neighbors.
Encourage your child's reasoning skills by asking them to focus on asking "Why?" when others make statements. Tell them to ask, "What
evidence do you have?" and "Why do you believe that?".
Challenge your child to find out: How long would it take to drive all the way around the outside of your state? (Use the scale on the map to
determine the approximate distance traveled. Assume an average driving speed of 60 miles an hour.)
Play I like Coffee but I don't like Tea with your child. One player lists a few pairs of items where they "like" one and not the other using to a
secret rule. Other players try to learn the rule that determines what things the player likes by guessing items. The rule is that things with the
letter 'T" are disliked (Example: I like camping but not tents, I like baseball but not football, etc.).
Have your child find out: How long would it take somebody to guess a combination lock? (How long does it take to try one combination? How
many combinations are there? What if the person already knows the last number?)
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