Today's Tip for Families

2026-06-15

Help Your Child Learn Real-Life Math

You don’t have to be a whiz in math yourself to help your elementary schooler build skills in this important subject. Just involve your child in the kinds of math you can do easily around your home.

Here are some ideas:

Measure. Have your child help you with household measuring tasks: hanging a picture, building shelves, painting a wall.
Estimate. Ask your child to make estimates about distance and time. Say, “It is a half-mile to the service station. How long do you think it will take us to walk there and back?” Then, check when you finish to see if your child's estimate was correct.
Make graphs. Have your child count and graph the colors or makes of cars in a parking lot on a weekday. Try it again on a weekend. Then, make predictions: What does your child think you would find if you counted at a later time?
Play games together. Tic-tac-toe, checkers, dominoes, Concentration, Scrabble, chess, and card games like hearts and rummy all use problem-solving skills and logic. These are important math skills to keep sharp.

Brought to you by:

West Point Consolidated School District