Use board games. Engage young children in math with the assistance of a board game such as Monopoly. The main premise behind the game involves money in the bank. Apply mathematics to the real world with concepts such as bankruptcy, real estate, renting out properties and paying taxes, all of which are related to numbers. To keep the children interested, let them take turns being responsible for handling the cash.
Pretend to go shopping. Teach children about numbers by using the everyday task of shopping. Open up a shopping website or catalog; ask the children to mark off items they wish to purchase. Then, instruct the children to figure out the total sum of the items at the end. Then, give them the challenge of reducing the total costs to $50 or less, for example.
Try cooking. Most children are familiar with the activity of cooking, usually from watching their parents. Use cooking as a way to illustrate mathematical concepts, from fractions and multiplication to division. Pose questions to get the children's mathematical minds jogging. For instance, ask a question such as, "Susan has three teaspoons of milk. Joseph has three tablespoons of milk. Who has more milk?" Then, provide the children with a visual representation of the answers using spoons.
Discuss shapes. To get young children interested in geometry, start by talking about shapes, from perfect circles to triangles. Bring the subject to life by going outdoors, whether to a grocery store or to a park. Ask the children to point out any examples of geometric shapes. For example, a stop sign represents an octagon, while an egg represents an oval.
Come up with word problems. Instead of barraging children with overwhelming numbers on a chalkboard or piece up paper, illustrate a mathematical concept through a word problem. To make your word problems interesting and accessible to children, use familiar names as characters and silly predicaments. For example, say something like "Adrianna bought three dresses. Her mother took two away after Adrianna refused to eat her spinach at dinner. How many dresses does Adrianna have now?"