Welcome back to 5 Day of Homeschool… where members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew are sharing their Homeschooling insights.

Yesterday we talked about some of the different ways we are incorporating math learning into everyday activities. Sometimes they just need a little more time to catch up to the concept.

Today we’re going to look at a few more ways you can bring Math into Everyday Activities.

There are many ways to “show what you know” – Math Lab Day allows homeschool families to break away from the rut of textbooks and reinforce their text book learning with fun, games and hands-on activities!

It is important for us to help our children see that real learning happens all the time, not just when they are filling out worksheets or sitting at our school table.

Some homeschoolers add a bit of spice to their homeschooling with a weekly Math Lab day. One  day a week plan to leave the math curriculum on the shelf and do some hands-on learning with games, crafts, etc.

Math Lab days are also great for using math software you have sitting around, but may never get around to using. Or how about those math games you have purchased, but usually remain on the shelf collecting dust?

Things You Can do on Math Lab Day for…

Young children

•  Counting games with candy, Legos, or anything else you might have lying around.
• “War” with a regular deck of cards or make your own deck with numbers to 100 and maybe a “wild card” or two to make things more exciting.
• If you have them, [easyazon_link identifier=”B000URL296″ locale=”US” tag=”mommybabytool-20″]Snap Cubes[/easyazon_link] (a popular manipulative) are great to play with, making “trains” of different color patterns. You start the pattern, and your child adds on to the train following the pattern. Then let them start a pattern and you finish it.
• Any board game that requires dice and counting.
• Use standard and non-standard items to measure things around the house. “Hey, Mom, did you know the cat is 50 paper clips long?”
• Kitchen – baking involves using lots of real life fractions – while you’re at it,how about sharing the “fruits” of your math lesson with a neighbor!
• Play store. The whole family gets in this one because the adults act silly and raise high prices or cancel credit cards. We use [easyazon_link identifier=”B0009O1J0C” locale=”US” tag=”mommybabytool-20″]this cash register[/easyazon_link] which comes with a credit car and a coupon card.

Elementary thru Middle School

• Some cute books to get across Math concepts are theMath with Literature! series : Sir Cumference, A Place for Zero, Equal Schmequal, and other titles in the math adventure series.
• Some favorite math games are [easyazon_link identifier=”B000BAVDK0″ locale=”US” tag=”mommybabytool-20″]S’math[/easyazon_link] and[easyazon_link identifier=”B001HTBOSK” locale=”US” tag=”mommybabytool-20″]Knock Out!from Muggin’s Math[/easyazon_link].
• Well loved board games, including [easyazon_link identifier=”B002JSM3KQ” locale=”US” tag=”mommybabytool-20″]Monopoly[/easyazon_link], [easyazon_link identifier=”B00083HIJK” locale=”US” tag=”mommybabytool-20″]PayDay[/easyazon_link]!, [easyazon_link identifier=”B00000IVAK” locale=”US” tag=”mommybabytool-20″]Sequence[/easyazon_link] and more.
• Card games like [easyazon_link identifier=”B00004TZY8″ locale=”US” tag=”mommybabytool-20″]UNO[/easyazon_link] and War. A favorite is to use flashcards with math facts as t “war” deck.
• Videos: Multiplication Rock , Money Rock (search youtube)
• Play store as listed above.
• If you have any handheld, electronic math toys, Math Lab Day is a good time to make sure they are put to use.
• You can see the picture of the[easyazon_link identifier=”B00OKIFV3Y” locale=”US” tag=”mommybabytool-20″] Rubics Cube[/easyazon_link] above. While this doens’t exactly have your son or daughter doing math computations it challenges their brain and helps them to work on problem solving (aha!).

So make tomorrow an Out of the Books kind of day!