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 10 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 3rd grade
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Have your child estimate the length of their foot in centimeters. Check by measuring.
Place a small flat object to be used as a target on one side of the room and toss balled up socks from the other side. Have your child
measure how far away each person is. The closest person wins.
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Have your child draw several people. Ask them to count by fives the total number of fingers and toes the drawn people have.
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Before making a purchase, give your loose change to your child for them to count out the appropriate amount.
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Go on a pentagon scavenger hunt with your child (on a soccer ball, middle of a 5-pointed star, home plate, an open envelope, a simple house
with a roof, or school crossing signs).
Have your child do an experiment with only a few possible outcomes (roll one die, spin a spinner, toss a small toy, pick a crayon out of a box
of 8). Show the results of doing the experiment 25 times in a bar graph. Discuss what happened most often.
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Have your child identify numbers on license plates as even or odd.
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Have a plastic bag throwing contest with your child. Measure to see who threw the farthest and by how much.
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Make up a game with your child that involves toy money and counting by 5s, 10s, and 100s. You can use play money that you already have
(such as monopoly money) or make your own.
While traveling, look at license plates with your child and compete to make the largest (or smallest) three digit number possible using the
digits on the license plate.
Have your child make a timeline of their day, hour by hour, from midnight until bedtime.
Look at the weather report with your child and ask them to find the temperature range for today and each day of the rest of the week by
subtracting the low temperature from the high temperature.
Search for bar graphs in the newspaper or in a magazine with your child. What do they show? What comparisons can you make?
Play Egg Carton Addition with your child. Write the numbers 1-12 in the bottom of an old egg carton. Put two tokens (such as pennies)
inside, close the carton, and shake it up. Add together the numbers where the tokens land.
Play Pin the Tail on the Donkey with your child. Draw a picture of a donkey without a tail and tape it to the wall. Draw and cut out several
'tails'. Put a piece of tape on the end of each tail. On a player's turn, they are blindfolded and spun around, then attempt to tape the tail to the
donkey in the right place. Measure to see who won and by how much.
Ask your child whether it is a.m. or p.m. throughout the day. Ask whether certain activities normally happen when it is a.m. or p.m. (waking
up, eating breakfast, eat dinner, go to bed, etc.).
Practice flash cards with your child for addition and subtraction with numbers that are 20 or less (if you don't have a set, make them together
using index cards).
Have your child measure rooms around your home with different family members shoes (use a child's flip-flop, an adult's boot, a teenager's
rollerblade, a baby's sandal, etc.) Compare the measurements (Which required the most? Which required the least? How are the sizes of the
shoes related to the number of times it had to be counted? etc.).
Look in the grocery ads and find coupons with your child. Figure out what coins could be the same as the amount of money each coupon
saves (Example: "Save 35 cents" might be a quarter and a dime or 7 nickels.).
Play Place Value War with your child (use a deck of cards with 10 and up removed). Each player flips over three cards, the first one in the
hundreds place, the second one in the tens place, and the third one in the ones place. The player with the bigger number keeps all of the
cards. If there is a tie, deal three more cards each.
Play Pyramid Scheme with your child to work on place value. Use a standard deck of cards with 10s and face cards removed. Deal each
player a 'pyramid' of 10 cards face down. From bottom to top make rows of 4, 3, 2, and 1 cards representing 4, 3, 2, and 1-digit numbers.
Players flip over their top row and compare: the player with the largest number wins a point. Continue down the pyramid, then redeal. First to
15 wins.
Play Fortnight Frenzy with your child. Deal a whole deck of cards face up into 13 piles of 4 cards each, so that the three cards at the bottom
of each pile are showing. You may only pick up the top card from a pile at any time. Remove and discard pairs of cards that add up to 14
(Jack - 11, Queen - 12, King - 13). Remove as many cards as possible.
Play The Measurement Game with your child. Draw 5 nickel-sized circles on a sheet of paper and number them #1-5. Each player starts at
#1 with a different colored marker. Draw a card from the deck, and use a ruler to travel exactly that many centimeters. Don't go off the page!
To win, be the first to travel through all 5 circles in order.
Have your child count the total number of cents while counting nickels, dimes, or dollars.
Bake brownies (or rectangular pizza/cake) with your child. Slice the brownies into squares of equal size, and use repeated addition to count
the total number of brownies.
Make four 3x3 squares for your child. In the four middle squares write 12, 13, 14, and 15. Challenge your child to write the digits 1-8 around
each of the squares so the 3 numbers on the top, bottom, left, and right each sum to the the middle number.
Make a homemade ruler with your child. Use a regular-sized sheet of paper and make a fold that goes diagonally across from one corner to
the opposite. A dollar bill is six inches, so they can measure off two six-inch markings to get 12 inches. Fold the bill in half to get 3 inches,
and fold that in thirds to get 1 inch. Mark all of these on the paper to finish the ruler.
Play Magic Square with your child. Write digits 1-9 in a 3x3 square so each row, column, and diagonal has the same sum.
Go on a quadrilateral (4-sided shapes) scavenger hunt with your child (besides just rectangles and trapezoids), (Examples: kites, diamonds
(on playing cards), argyle pattern, pendant earrings, rubber eraser, tire tread, bike frame, collapsing drying rack, etc.).
How Can I Include Math In My Child's Summer?
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Suggested summer math activities for students entering 3rd grade
While walking, ask your child to practice skip-counting with each step by 5s, 10s, and 100s.
Play Race to the Top with your child. Each player takes a card from the deck at the same time and adds it to their score (face cards are all
10). First to 100 wins.
Have your child estimate how much longer one person in your family's arm is than another's. Check by measuring.
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Make a "ruler collection" with your child: Collect things from around your home that are as close as possible to 1 inch, 2 inches, 3 inches, etc.
up to 1 foot.
Have your child research what year certain historical events happened. Use subtraction to figure out how long ago the events happened.
(Example: The airplane was invented in 1903, so 2013 - 1903 = 110 years ago.).
Ask your child what time it is to the nearest five minutes whenever you start or finish an activity (using a clocks with hands) or when the time is
a multiple of five minutes on a digital clock. Have your child write down the time as it would appear on a digital clock.
Have your child interview family members, friends or neighbors about their favorite fruit. Use tally marks to record the answers and then create
a graph using the information. Ask questions about which color had the most or fewest votes, how many votes there were in all, and how
many more votes one color had over another.
Play Beat the Calculator with your child. Ask addition and subtraction problems with numbers as big as 20 and let your child race to answer
the question before you (or another child) can answer it with a calculator.
Today, (Day 1 of 2) go on a grid scavenger hunt with your child (square-tiled floor, eggs in an egg carton, ice cube tray, pixels on a screen,
bumps on a Lego, squares on a quilt, squares on a board game, windowpanes in a window, openings on a chain-link fence, buttons on a
phone, brownies, tic-tac-toe board, wire cooling rack, plaid shirt, etc.).
Today, (Day 2 of 2) ask your child to use repeated addition to count the number of things arranged in a small grid (eggs in a carton, bumps on
a Lego, squares on a game board, windowpanes in a window, buttons on a phone, tic-tac-toe board etc.).
Point out house numbers to your child on your street or while traveling. Pay attention to where the even and odd numbers are.
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Have your child sell lemonade, juice, cookies, or snacks.
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Have your child arrange small objects into a rectangle to make them easier to count.
Have your child sort and organize a collection of objects (toys, food, books, clothes etc.) by their properties (color, size, shape, length, etc.),
and construct a bar graph with the results. Ask questions that involve adding several bars together to answer (Example: "How many of the toys
you counted were a primary color (red, blue, or yellow)?", "How many books were at least 8 inches long?", or "How many of the articles of
clothing do you wear on your feet and legs?").
Play Hide-And-Seek with your child, skip-counting by 5s, 10s, or 100s.
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Play Card Flipper with your child. Use a deck with Jack = 11, Queen = 12, King = 13. Toss three cards up in the air and add the ones that
land face up to your score. First to 100 wins!
Ask your child how much money something would cost if it cost one dime more or less, or how much something expensive would cost if you
had a ten dollar off coupon. Ask how much something would cost if it were a dollar more or if you had a dollar off coupon (Example: A block
of cheese cost 6.89. If I have a coupon for a dollar off what is the new price?).
Have your child measure their vertical leap. On a wall or pole outside use a piece of chalk or tape to mark how high they can reach. Tell them
to jump vertically as high as they can, and mark that new height. Help your child measure the distance between the marks. Repeat several
times. Have them show their results on a dot plot. Do they always jump the same height? What's the difference between the highest and
lowest jumps?
Have your child decide whether there are an even or odd number of socks in the laundry.
Talk with your child about how long activities take (Example: This movie is 92 minutes and we've been watching it for an hour, so there are 32
minutes left. We started watching it at 4:09, so we'll finish at 5:41. Dinner is at 6:00 so we have 19 minutes between the movie and dinner).
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Challenge your child to find as many shapes as they can with all the sides the same length (a saltine cracker does have sides the same, a
Graham cracker does not; a card table does, a refrigerator does not; a yield sign does, a pennant does not; etc.).
Have your child draw a house on graph paper. Ask them to find how big the rectangular part of the house is by counting squares.
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Challenge your child to find all the ways they can make change for a nickel. How about for a dime? A quarter? A half-dollar?
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Challenge your child to find out: How tall is a staircase? (measure each of the steps and add them)
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Play Equation Artist with your child. Use a deck without face cards. Turn over three cards. If you can make an equation by inserting '+', '-',
and '=' you get a point. First to five points wins. (Example: 5, 6, 1 gives 5 = 6 - 1. 3, 7, 2 gives no points. 4, 4, 8 gives 4 + 4 = 8.).
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Challenge your child to find out: How many square floor tiles does your bathroom rug cover? Kitchen rug? (use repeated counting)
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Challenge your child to figure out how many different ways they can cut or tear a sheet of newspaper into 4 pieces that all are the same size (4
squares, 4 long skinny rectangles, 4 right triangles, 4 trapezoids, etc.).
Play Close Shave with your child using a deck with numbers 1-9. Each round, each player gets 4 cards. Make two 2-digit numbers and add
them together. Try to get as close as possible to 100 without going over. Closest player wins the round.
After making a purchase, give your loose change to your child for them to count how much you got.
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Go on a "thirds" scavenger hunt with your child (Ex: pamphlets, flags, snail mail letter, Mercedes logo, rope, banana, clover, etc.).
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Today, have your child make a timeline of the life of a family member or famous person, or make a timeline of their own life.
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