Many grocery store chains offer a discount for becoming a store member. Encourage subtraction practice by taking the discounted VIP customer price from the original price to find the actual discount. Bring a pencil and a notepad to the grocery store to add up the discounts received by becoming a store card member using mathematical skills. The total of how much money was saved during one shopping trip, can be added to previous shopping trips to also find the membership card's worth.
Retail stores often offer a percentage off the original prices with a sale. Using a calculator, children can compute the actual discount of the item at checkout through multiplication. Other sales offer a certain price off the original, so the child can use subtraction to configure the price.
Not only can children find the discount of sale-priced items but can add the total spent during the shopping trip. Back-to-school shopping and holiday gift shopping are potential "teachable moment" opportunities for mathematical skill practice.
During the spring, summer and fall months, many area neighborhoods host community yard or garage sales to get rid of unused or unwanted items. Give your child a budget that she must adhere to in purchasing some small items such as books, toys or home decoration items. She must add up her possible purchases and take the total away from the budgetary amount to make sure she has enough money to pay for her items.
The last day of the yard sale, people may, in a last-minute attempt to get rid of their things, offer a "half-off" sale which requires the child to multiply the amount by 50 percent or 1/2. Using fractions is one method of real-life mathematical reasoning.
Recipes often require various forms of measurement. Create a confectionery dessert with younger children by making a pudding pie in a pre-made graham cracker crust that doesn't require heat or a baked layer cake with older children. Measuring ingredients with teaspoons or tablespoons, cups or ounces in whole or fractional amounts reinforces math concepts.
For a more advanced cooking activity, double a recipe or halve it, which requires the child to mathematically configure the new measurement amounts of each ingredient.