Hi, Friends! Is it summer yet? 😎 I bet you’re asking yourself that every morning when you get up to head to your school or get ready for virtual classes. Or, maybe you’re a parent who happened to land on this blog page while searching for summertime math games for your children who are about to be home for the summer. Either way, this week’s blog post should appeal to you. I’m chatting this week about summertime math activities and games. Also, keep reading for a link to a free printable summertime math bookmark that you can use with your students or send home to families. 😊
Summer Math Basics
Summer is a great time to review basic math with our kiddos and a good time to send home some activities for our students to retain the knowledge that we worked so hard to build during the course of the school year. Families love when teachers send home activities and games to keep their kids busy with fun, learning activities.
In order to retain knowledge, children should revisit important math concepts during summertime. The good part is that research shows that it doesn’t have to be lengthy worksheets or boring textbook work. I’m going to walk you through some ways that summer math learning can be fun and talk about activities that kids will actually want to do! 😊
Math Games for Summer
If school is not quite out yet, there are many summer-themed games that you can play with your students right now. Let’s be honest, the last few weeks of school are usually filled with more relaxed learning activities. I like to mention planting gardens of vegetables or flowers with children. It is such a fun way to explore many areas of learning. I know this isn’t quite a game per se, but it’s still fun math! 🌹 Have children measure a plant’s growth and chart it.
I love to go hiking with my family. Make a game out of it by searching for shapes in nature. You can even make a bingo-like card for kids to use to mark off their shapes. Another fun game is to use sidewalk chalk to write numerals on the pavement. Ask children to run or hop to an even or odd number. This also helps when kids have the wiggles to help to get their energy out in a fun manner. Use sidewalk chalk to also make an outdoor number line for students to use. If you’re looking for some digital fun, keep reading for a few great resources to check out.
Summer Math for Everyday Fun
Many older children play with water balloons outside in their yard. Children can weigh two balloons in their hands to determine which one is heavier and which one is lighter. Great for number sense. Many kids also play sports during their summer break. Children can practice their fractions by figuring out how many oranges are needed to feed their baseball team with a snack. Ask them, “How many slices can we get per orange?”
Back outside, young children can help fill their kiddie pool by counting the number of water jugs needed to fill it up. Families are busy during the summer and are going numerous places each day. Children can count the number of steps from the house to the car, the car to the shop’s door, the car back to the house. Simple math such as this still reinforces math concepts and skills during the summer.
Summer Math Activities for Families
Next, let’s talk about ideas for summer math activities that you can send home to families to do with their children. Making popsicles 🧊… how fun is this? Include in a go-home-for-summer packet a newsletter with a list of fun activities that parents can do with their children. Now, back to popsicle making. Children can help make popsicles by measuring the ingredients. If the ice cream truck is more their style, encourage parents to let their child help them count the change to pay the ice cream driver.
After putting the ingredients together for the popsicles, children can time how long they take to freeze. They can even hypotheses how long it will take. I haven’t given you all a reason to visit Target lately. 😉 So, here’s one reason…Target has some simple, inexpensive popsicle molds in their dollar spot section.
Summertime Beach Trip…
During a summer trip to the beach, parents can make sand castles with their kids, and castles can be “given awards” for the tallest and the shortest castle. Suggest to parents that they can ask their child to estimate and count how many scoops of sand it takes to fill the sand bucket. Then, kids can be asked which bucket has more sand in it. Here’s another sand activity, can’t you tell where my vacation will be this year, have children draw shapes in the sand. Even better, pick up some shape cookie cutters to use to build shape castles.
Parents will love having things to do with their kids, and you will make next year’s teachers happy by keeping their future students up-to-date with their math skills. 😃 We’ve chatted about a lot of non-digital summer math activities, but let’s be honest, kids love computers and tablets. And, parents sometimes use these items as rewards for their children. Next, let’s explore some fun digital math activities that are great for summer learning.
Benefits of Summer Digital Learning
We’ve explored many hands-on ways to make math learning fun during the summer. Now, let’s talk about some digital ways that children can keep up with their math skills during the summer break.
The nice thing about digital resources is that they are paperless. There is nothing worse than trying to take anything paper to the beach or park as a children’s activity. It either flies away, gets spilled upon, or wrinkles. Digital games and activities don’t usually suffer from any of these. Well, except for spilled liquid.😒
Digital also means that you don’t have to buy printer paper or ink, and there’s no prep. Now, if you are still not out yet for summer, there are a few things that work well when printed. Or, maybe you are teaching summer school. So, let’s talk about digital products that can be printed. Some slides print well enough to use in your classroom and help students with everyday math.
Anchor charts can be printed full size and put on the wall for students to refer to on a regular basis. Many are colorful with cute characters. Some teachers choose to put anchor charts in a binder for student use. Interactive slides can usually be printed with multiple ones per page. Again, some teachers prefer to do them by hand with dry erase pockets and markers or printed out for individual use. Just remember, not all slides print well. You just have to try them first.
Summertime Math Suggestions
I’m going to wrap this post up with a few popular digital resources that teachers like to get at the end of the year. It helps with summer school, family use, and gets you ready for the next school year. These products contain mini-lessons, anchor charts, examples, and tons of task cards for student practice. These also work well for family use.
This 2nd grade bundle 👆 is a complete set of numbers and operation activities. It is completely summer-themed, and kids love the bright colors and fun characters. If you want something that can also take you through the school year, this 1st grade bundle 👇 is both summer- and school-themed. It is also a numbers and operations bundle. Click each image to read more about all of the activities included. Both of these will last you years and help solidify basic math concepts of addition, subtraction, place value, etc.
If you’re new to the Savvy Apple Community, I usually like to send my members freebies that will help make teaching and learning fun. Here’s a link to a free summer math printable. I designed fun, colorful bookmarks for you to use with your students or to send home to families. You’ll also be subscribed to the Savvy Apple Newsletter where I share tips and strategies along with great digital math resources and freebies along the way! Click here for the download! Welcome to the community!😋
I hope this blog post helps you get ready for summer break by preparing your students for math skill retention, offer families some much needed activities for their children, and gives you a few fresh summer math activities to use with your students and kiddos. Comment and share if you have any other suggestions for fun summertime math learning. I hope you have a great week!
Jess
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