Math is an important skill that is needed for a wide variety of things in our day to day lives. We need math to figure out measurements, how much of a tip to leave, and how to budget our pay for bills. Others use math in their daily jobs, keeping track of company expenses, making inventions work, or designing towns and buildings.
Benjamin Banneker had a love and talent for math. He taught himself mathematics and used his gift to pursue astronomy and surveying. Banneker assisted with surveying land for the United States’ capital and wrote several almanacs with a variety of useful information. Click here to learn more about Benjamin Banneker.
Activities for Math:
~Learning to Count Money (Addition and Monetary Skills)
Teach your child the different values of US currency coins. (A dime is smaller than a nickel, but it is worth more!) Then, challenge your child to add up a different pile of change every week for a given time period. If your child is correct in adding the value of the coins together, they get to keep the change!
You can even toss it up and throw in a dollar to add to the challenge.
This activity teaches addition and monetary skills. Plus, what child wouldn’t love to make some money!
~Keep tally at the grocery store or supermarket
Bring a calculator, or a pad of paper and a pencil, and ask your child to write down prices of some of the items on the shopping list. Then you’re your child add them together.
You can also combine this activity with shopping for ingredients for your nutritious meal. Your child can write down the price of the ingredients of the meal to see how much the meal costs.