Once a week, let your child make family mathematical decisions. Ask him to keep a "meal math" notebook to enable him to work math problems out on paper rather than in his head. If he discovers he made a mistake, instruct him to cross it out and fix it instead of erasing. Keep meal math rewarding and uplifting. Let him determine how many pizzas will be needed if each family member eats two slices and each pizza contains 10 slices. Discuss pizza slice geometric shapes, and what fractions various numbers of slices represent when you remove them from the whole pizza. Let him double recipes, halve recipes and convert various other measurements. Ask him to find how many squares are on his waffle by multiplying the number of squares in each horizontal row by the number of squares in each vertical column.
Let your child count money any chance she can. This will help her gain a working understanding of how money works. For example, when you grocery shop, give her a list of five small items and a specific amount of money. Her goal is to gather those items, add up their prices, including tax, on a notepad, and figure out how much change she should receive from the cashier. She can't use a calculator. She can check her answer when she checks her items out under your supervision and receives the change.
Dice can be used for teaching math in various ways. An interactive dice-rolling game called Chances can be re-created at home. The game can help teach the concept that an increase or decrease in the number of dice rolls directly affects an outcome. Use dice to help children brush up on addition, subtraction and multiplication skills. Instruct them to roll a pair of dice and add, subtract or multiply the two numbers. Time them and offer rewards.
Play family games with dice, such as Monopoly and Yahtzee. Both games require addition skills and can reiterate the probability of chance. Monopoly also presents money challenges.
The concept of measuring time can be confusing to kids. Offer your child a clock for his room and a watch for when he is away from home. Education Online suggests making lists of his favorite activities and placing them in categories marked seconds, minutes and hours. He can compare lengths of time to driving distances, the website also suggests. Chart the family's daily schedules. Make a calendar and announce specific events. For example, tell him, "The family will be going to dinner at six o'clock." Once he becomes familiar with time, introduce the concept of time zones.