The Christmas Holidays are here, your kids are tired and you probably are too. You want them to have a break and enjoy themselves but you also don’t want them to lose any momentum with their learning. So how do you keep their maths brains engaged without it feeling like you are punishing them? Here are my 5 tips for staying on top of their maths during the Christmas holidays.

Christmas Maths Tip 1:

Engage your children in some of the real life maths that comes with Christmas. Shopping involves calculating costs, using percentages and comparing better values. Cooking involves ratio, time and measures like grams and litres. There is literally so much maths involved with Christmas and the more children engage with the real life maths skills the less intimidating they seem as questions on a paper.

Christmas Maths Tip 2:

Solve puzzles. Algebraic puzzles are fab at engaging with Year 6 algebraic skills but in a fun way. These are great to do with the whole family- including the grandparents!  Here’s a Christmas themed algebra puzzle but I also have an algebra E-book full of puzzles including SATs style. If you need a bit of help with solving them, I even have a video giving tips.

   

 

Christmas Maths Tip 3:

Visit the Nrich site, it is full of puzzles which you need to think outside of the box for. Answers are all there with detailed explanations and some puzzles are interactive. Here is a video I made of one of their puzzles.

Christmas Maths Tip 4:

Play the Memory Game. Improving your child’s memory will help their maths! There are tons of fun memory games online but this is a great Christmas game to play with the family. Grab a few items and you can either give yourselves a set time then cover over and see who can remember the most OR you can start to remove items and see who can figure out what’s missing first.

 

Christmas Maths Tip 5:

Play online maths games. Your child can spend a few minutes each day playing a game which always feels less like doing actual revision but is helping them retain and consolidate their learning. Times tables are a great one to practice if not secure yet but I love using these games for quick fire percentage and fraction questions. Hit The Button is one of my all time faves for some basic number skills but I also love Maths Frame. You can subscribe for more access but there is a perfectly good free games section and some that are tablet friendly. On most games you can select the math skill your child needs to practice.

 

There really are plenty of ways to keep your children ticking over with their math skills without it feeling like they are doing “homework” or “revision” and they don’t need to be onerous or stressful tasks. Make it as relevant as possible to activities you already do or to fun activities that the family can get involved in. Is there anything else you would add to my top 5 tips?

Merry Christmas 🙂