6 Ways to Practice Math Skills (Without Worksheets)

Worksheets are the last thing kids want to do during a break. You may be met with grumbles and eye rolls, but practicing math skills is still incredibly important even outside of school. Here are some ways to help students of all ages build math confidence and practice these skills without the tedium of math fact sheets:

Get Cooking

Following a recipe is a great way to practice reading, measurement, and math skills. For an extra challenge, have your child either double or cut a recipe in half on the fly while they go! This mastery of fractions, volume, and memory will be helpful (and the outcome is delicious, if they do it right).

Price Per Unit Practice

When you’re at the grocery store, have your child practice calculating the price per unit for something on your list. For example, if you need a bag of flour, have them calculate which size package will be the best value (without cheating by looking at the tags on the shelves). This practice will build confidence with skills like division, decimals, and volume.

Calculate Tip When You Eat Out

Don’t rely on your phone! Practice calculating with percentages by figuring out the tip on your dinner bill. You can start with something easy (like 10 or 20%), but as they get more confident, make it harder with a different percentage (like 17.5%). 

Tip: For a percent like 17.5%, encourage them to break it down into smaller pieces (10%, 5%, then half of 5% for the remaining 2.5%)

Calculate Change

Not many of us use cash any more, but if you can make a habit of it sometimes, calculating what change you expect is a great exercise for math skills. Whether it’s at the snack bar at the pool or in line at the grocery store, talk about what change you should get, what combination of bills/coins it would be, and how to count to make sure you got what you needed. For younger kids, you can say something like “the total is $8.32 and this is the money I have, can you help me figure out what makes the most sense to pay for this?”

Board games

Games are a great way to build the skills your brain needs in order to do math effectively. Here’s a list of some of our favorite math-focused games to try (no matter your age)! 

Estimation in Real Life

If we’re being honest, few of us use exact math processes in our daily life… but we estimate all the time! Helping our kids practice estimation is a great way to build math skills without worksheets. You can do this by:

• Estimating how much gas you’re going to need (based on how empty the tank is) x an approximate price per gallon for gas
• Doing a rough estimate of how much a grocery bill is going to be by adding up rounded totals while shopping
• When putting leftovers away, have your child pull appropriate containers to estimate how much will fit in each one. This builds skills like visual processing and understanding of volume.

Practice Math Skills to Eliminate Fear About Math Tasks

Math isn’t going away, even once school is over. If your student is hesitant about any of these areas, doing real-life examples is a great way to help them understand why math matters and build some confidence.

Click here for more tips to help overcome math anxiety and build confidence with math skills! >>