Summer Math Ideas

Looking for ways to keep math fresh during the summer? How about to use the summer to help students grasp some concepts that just haven’t fully sunk in yet?

Summertime can be a great time to really give students a glimpse into math outside of a textbook, to build their biblical worldview of math, or to give some added practice on different skills. Below are a few ideas to help.

• Summer Projects and Problem-Solving Skills – A great way to help your students learn problem-solving skills is to give them opportunities to use math outside a textbook, guiding them through figuring out what information they know, what they need to know, and what steps they can take to get from one to the other. This previous blog post gives some ideas of how you might do that as you live life this summer.
• Glimpses of Math in Action – Explore how math applies in different industries of interest to your child–or in helping us explore God’s creation. NASA has a whole section of resources on their website that shows many applications in exploring the heavens; only note that they are not from a biblical worldview, so you’ll want to use them as a discernment discussion too. For example, this No Small Steps video gives a fascinating look into the “brains” behind a SLS rocket. It would provide a wonderful opportunity to talk about how MUCH work went into designing the rocket…and how MUCH more powerful our own brains are too. There’s no way a rocket would assemble by chance…nor is there any way our brains did!
• Firming Up the Basics & Worldview Building – Summertime could be a great time to go back over concepts students have studied and review them, building their biblical worldview in the process. Revealing Arithmetic: Math Concepts from a Biblical Worldview is a resource I wrote that has both the biblical worldview of and ideas to reinforce arithmetic concepts (counting through exponents and roots). One idea is to go through a chapter of it a week, picking one or two of the ideas listed there. (Ideas include things like playing games together, included worksheets, everyday life examples, hands-on activities, etc.) With older students, you can have them read the chapter themselves and pick an idea. There’s even a video eCourse you could use; if the student has already learned the basics of the concept, you can have them watch the videos with you as a way to review.
• Keeping the Facts Fresh – There are a variety of online worksheet generators you can use to generate worksheets your child can use to review math’s mechanics. We’ve got a list of some on our Principles of Mathematics Book Extra’s page.

I hope you have a fun summer together!