Incorporating opportunities at home to apply math concepts and reasoning skills in ways children can relate to and take an interest in can help strengthen understanding and make learning relevant. There are many opportunities at home to introduce and apply concepts of measurement, graphing, estimation and even statistics, an often daunting subject area. These activities can also be a fun way to introduce math tools, such as stopwatches, measuring tapes and scales. Think about your family's common interests or routines, so that the activities can be relevant and everyone can participate. Keep in mind that while these projects can be fun, children will need some help with the planning, execution, graphing, and analyzing, especially for children with weaknesses in organization and initiation. The idea is that math can be fun and useful.

Measure the time it takes each family member to take a shower. Graph the results to compare everyone's times. Or time one person every day for a week and then find that individual's average, mean, median times.

Make a graph of everyone’s TV usage each week. Analyze the data - does TV-watching spike on the weekends?

Have children keep a log and chart gas usage over the course of a year - What is the average in miles per gallon for each family member’s car? How much money was spent on gas in a year? If the children had walked to the bus stop every morning, how much gas would have been saved?

Track the temperature for a month. Make a graph. Find the average, mean, and median.

Estimate how long it will take for one family member to unpack four bags of groceries. Then time the person to see how accurate the estimate was. Then the next time around, time how long it will take two people to unpack four bags of groceries. Did it take half as long?