My son, age 5, has recently become very excited about math. He is working on golden bead addition at school and is eager to explore all things math related. Listening to Maria and “following the child”, what should we do to encourage this love of math? We could go out and buy math “works” to extend his learning at home, but I am very strongly against doing work outside of school and the work period. We could get flash cards to drill and kill math facts, but that seems to me to be the quickest way to drill and kill a love of math. Instead we decided to focus on math that we encounter in our daily lives, the truly practical life math.

We encouraged and incorporated practical life math in the following ways:

1. Measuring anything and everything. The kids use a tape measure to help their dad figure out how much molding we need for a house project. They use measuring cups to find 1/4 cup of sugar for pancakes. Measurement is a great active type of math that combines both the tactile experience with brain power needed to make sense of the numbers.
2. Adding the tip and total at a restaurant. This is by far my favorite thing we started doing. I love to see my son, pen in hand puzzling over the amounts. We work with the kids to figure out how much to tip (doubling the first number of the total) and then how much the total is once the tip is added.
   

   Adding up the tab at our favorite Tex Mex place.

3. Monitoring sports scores. I am a huge college basketball fan, so March has left many games on in our house. We challenged the kids to figure out who is winning and by how much. It is so fun to watch my 7 year old approach this challenge differently than the 5 year old. It is also fun because in basketball the score changes quickly and they have to think fast to keep up!
4. Telling time. This one is tough because time is still very abstract to both of them. We usually just ask probing questions to get them to think about time. For example: “What time is it? If we need to go to ballet at 4:30, how long do you have to play?” Neither of them get the answer right very often but that leads to a great teachable moment about 60 minutes in an hour and so forth.

I love watching my kids use math in their everyday lives. I hope they continue to love math and see the connection between being independent and using math!