Be a Travel Agent: High Schooler

Be a Travel Agent: High Schooler

How you can help at home: Have your child plan a real or virtual trip - budget and all.
By Tonya Breland, Consulting Educator

Many families dream of spending part of their summer vacation traveling to places far and near. Whether your family makes traveling a reality this summer or simply dreams about it, you can ask your teen to be your travel agent and come up with family vacation options.

This activity incorporates a number of skills, including researching, understanding money, writing, and reading comprehension. It reinforces map skills and can broaden your child's knowledge of history. Your child will get to practice math by budgeting, measuring distance and time, and converting temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit. He'll even get a chance to hone his technology and artistic skills.

Here is what your child can do:

•Get travel brochures and/or search the Internet for exciting places for your family to visit.

•Decide where you'd like to travel: domestic or international. Research fun places and choose one or more to compare.

•Find out how far away it is and how long it would take to get there. What routes would you take? Map it out.

•Research the best way to travel, by car, plane, or boat — and the ticket prices and journey lengths for each.

•Where will you stay? Hotel, cabin, tent, resort, house, or villa?

What do each of these cost per night, including fees and local taxes?

•What will you do when you get to your destination? What activities do mom/dad want to do? What fun stuff would kids want to do? What about the grandparents (if traveling with you)? Are there historical sites or other educational opportunities to take advantage of while you're there? What will these activities cost, including transit?

•Create an itinerary. When are you leaving and returning? What will you do first, next?

•What will you need to take on the trip? Plan for the weather, account for any new gear or gadgets you'll need to purchase or rent, and convert temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit (here's the formula: °C x 9/5 + 32 = °F) when necessary.

•Decide how much money you can spend. Create a budget that includes the cost of:

1.Travel/transportation

2.Lodging

3.Eating

4.Entertainment

5.Does your budget cover every activity the family wants to do?

6.Where can you cut costs to make the money go further?

With all this information accumulated, ask your child to find a creative way to present the complete package of information to the family. Your teen may want to make a multimedia presentation, create a brochure, or use excel spreadsheets to show where costs could fluctuate. Plan trips for other family members, friends, and neighbors, too.

Enjoy your trip, whether it's real or virtual!

Undercover Math: Middle Schoolers

Undercover Math: The Tweener's Dream House

In this math activity, your child draws his bedroom to scale and creates his fantasy home.
By GreatSchools Staff

Suggesting that your middle-schooler exercise his math muscles at home may not produce the rousing "Great idea — right after I take out the trash and reorganize the linen closet" you might hope. But this activity sneakily disguises hardcore academics in a kid-friendly fantasy of cool stuff, extravagant inventions, and a lifestyle without parental constrictions.

When you and your child share some idle hour, prompt him to design his own dream home. Encourage him not simply to design a nice or big house — but a home ideally tailored to his middle school imagination. Is there a water slide running from the rooftop pool to the duck pond? A fireman's pole instead of a staircase? How about a secret passageway between the kids bedrooms for late-night spying missions? Whatever his interests or hobbies, suggest your child incorporate what he loves into his fantasy dwelling.

The key to success with this project is that you give your child the graduated steps to build on his math facts and know-how. This gradual process will help him understand how math has practical applications, which, when seasoned with creativity, can produce unadulterated fun.

What you'll need
Paper

Pen or pencil

Ruler or tape measure

Graph paper, preferably with one-inch squares

Colored pencils

Get it done
Step one: Brainstorm the dream house and its components. Make a final list of what the house has.

Step two: As a drafting warm-up, discuss how an architect uses math to draw up plans for a house. Explain that the plans need to be "to scale." Have your child measure his bedroom and make a smaller version of it on paper. After measuring the length and width of the room in feet, he can use a scale of one inch to one foot and draw the perimeter of the bedroom to scale on graph paper.

Step three: Show your child some examples of drafting such as these floor plans from Math-Kitecture, a website with architecture activities for kids.

Step four: Have your child map out the biggest and most central rooms first. Ask him how large certain rooms are, how one enters from one room to another, and where the windows are placed. If the house is multilevel, make him create a drawing of each floor — from roof deck to basement video-game lounge! By the end of the project, he should be about to tell you the square footage of each room as well as the home's total square footage. (If he designs round or triangular rooms, you may need to refresh your basic formulas for areas of different shapes!)

Step five: Put the drawing of the dream house on the refrigerator, and share the ideas with family and friends, encouraging your child to explain how he went about inventing and drawing his house to scale.

Sock Probability: Fifth Graders

Sock Probability: Fifth Graders

How you can help at home: Have your child explore probability with socks.
By Miriam Myers , GreatSchools Staff


In this math activity your child explores prediction and probability using different colored socks.
What You'll Need
•Paper

•Pen or pencil

•10 socks in various colors

Here's How to Do It
Talk with your child about probability, the chance or likelihood of a certain event occurring. Explain that probability can be expressed as a ratio of the number of specific events or outcomes to the total number of possible events or outcomes. Go over examples of probability with your child, such as the probability of a coin being tossed heads up (1/2 ). What is the probability of rolling an odd number on a die? (3/6) or (1/2).

Have your child grab 10 socks from his sock drawer, making sure they are different colors. Have your child go through each color and write down the probability of picking each sock. For example if there are three white socks the probability is 3/10 for white. Put the socks in a bag and have your child predict which color sock he will pull out. After he has chosen a sock, have him write down the color chosen and put the sock back in the bag. Have him continue this nine more times. When he is done have him compare the probability to the outcomes.

Act Like an Architect: Fourth Graders

Act Like an Architect: Draw Your Bedroom

How you can help at home: In this math activity, your child draws his bedroom to scale.
By Miriam Myers , GreatSchools Staff


Have your child explore measurement by drawing his bedroom to scale.
What you'll need
•Paper

•Pen or pencil

•Ruler or tape measure

•Graph paper preferably with one-inch squares

How to do it
Discuss how an architect uses math to draw up plans for a house. Explain that the plans need to be to scale. Tell your child he is going to take measurements of his bedroom and make a smaller scale of his room on paper. Have your child measure the length and width of the room in feet. Then have him measure two pieces of furniture, such as his bed and dresser, in feet. He does not need to measure every item in the room as this may be too overwhelming a task. Have him write the measurements on paper. Using a scale of one inch to one foot have him draw the bedroom to scale on graph paper. Talk about how he could rearrange the furniture in his bedroom by using the scale drawing to see how things would fit before physically moving the furniture. Discuss other reasons and jobs, such as an interior design or mapmaking, in which scale models are used.

Weather Graph: Third Graders

Weather Graph: Third Graders

How you can help at home: In this activity your child observes the weather and makes a bar graph.

By Miriam Myers , GreatSchools Staff

Have your child observe the weather and make a bar graph of the results. This activity combines math and science to build your child's graphing and observation skills. Your child will observe the weather for a week or more, keep track of weather patterns on a chart and then display the results in a bar graph.

What you'll need:

•Paper

•Pen or pencil

•Graph paper or lined paper for making the bar graph

•Colored markers or crayons

Here's how to do it

Discuss with your child the weather patterns where you live. Talk about the weather at different times of the year and the changes in the weather on a weekly basis. Come up with a list of the types of weather with your child such as sunny, cloudy, snowy and rainy. Have your child make a chart with the types of weather listed on the left with room on the right to tally the weather type. Designate a period of time that your child will tally the weather, such as a week or a month. Each day at about the same time, have your child record the weather. When the designated time is up, have your child tally each weather type.

Review bar graphs with your child. Then have her make a graph to display the weather information. Have her draw a large L. On the vertical line have her write the number of days and write a label such as "Number of Days." On the horizontal line have her write the types of weather and a label such as "Types of Weather." Have her fill in the bars with different colors. Then come up with a title for the graph such as "Daily Weather." Discuss the data with her, asking questions such as, "What type of weather did we see the most and the least? "Is the information easier to read in the bar graph or the tally sheet?"

Beach Ball Math: Second Graders

Beach Ball Math: Second Graders

How you can help at home: Try this game to help your child with basic addition and subtraction facts.
By Linda Eisenger, Consulting Educator


This game reinforces the skill of quickly recalling basic addition and subtraction facts.

What You'll Need:
•An inflated beach ball

•Permanent marker (black or dark blue)

Here's How to Do It

Divide the ball into large sections with the permanent marker. In each section write a numeral. Toss the ball to another player or up in the air and catch. Locate the sections in which the player's thumb has landed, and remember the numeral. Toss the ball again and note where the catcher's thumb lands. Add or subtract these numerals. Keep playing!

Extensions of the game
Increase the difficulty by using larger numbers to add and subtract, or by multiplying the numbers.

Learning to Love Math: Preschoolers

Laundry Sort

How you can help at home: Make doing laundry with your child fun and educational!
By Miriam Myers , GreatSchools Staff

Teach your preschooler early math skills by having him/her help you sort laundry. He'll be using color recognition, categorizing and counting skills.

What you'll need
•Dirty laundry of various colors

Here's how to do it

Before you put the laundry in the washer have your child help you sort the whites from the darks. Explain why mixing white and dark colored clothing can cause the dark colors to come off on the white colors. You could even make this more fun by sorting more colors (blues, reds, etc.)

When the laundry is clean have your child focus on a particular task. You might ask him to make a pile of shirts, pants or socks. You could also have him count the number of shirts in the pile. Another time you can have your child sort the socks by color or size. Who knew doing the laundry could be so fun!