The summer is a great time to make sure your children are up to the challenges of the next school year and the Math they will encounter in their next grade.

Even if they did fine last year, it is important to keep those skills current over the summer months.

Be prepared

Do the Summer Math Assignment together with your child without giving the answers to see if there are any gaps in math facts knowledge or conceptual understanding. Check out your child’s school website to see which math program will be used next year and find the book in the library or download a starter chapter or ‘Get Ready’ chapter and go over that together with your child in the same way: don’t give the answers, but talk about what s/he already knows about these type of questions and how you could solve it. Use small objects (pennies, paperclips, buttons, Lego blocks etc.) to model the problem and solve by playing it out hands-on

Check for learning disabilities

Dyscalculia is the Math Learning Disability that often gets overlooked by teachers and parents. It is an inborn disability that makes it hard to do basic math. Make sure your children do not have any of the symptoms. Many children show the hallmark signs of a math LD for several years without being identified and having to go without help. You can check it with our free screener HERE (free registration required), or you can do the online Math and Dyscalculia Screening Test HERE, or you can contact us for a full Dyscalculia assessment.

Make sure you keep their math skills current with games and playful everyday life activities

During summer there is more time for building activities, so get out the blocks and Lego’s. Engage the children in talking about how much the shopping will add up to and ask to help you in adjusting measurements in recipes for more or less people. Talk about how many chores they need to do to get enough money for a desired item. Estimating is important too, so together make an estimate about the driving times related to the distance to sport facilities, camps, and your summer location and check it with the actual driving time. Keeping score and comparing scores in their favorite sport is another activity that shows math is useful and all around us. Also connecting with math in a fun, positive way can ease away any math anxiety.

Last, but not least, you can download our guide to prevent the summer slide HERE and regularly engage them in playful activities and games that will ensure they don’t lose the math skills they worked so hard for to acquire last year. Have fun with math!

Children enjoy a long summer vacation and play a lot of internet games on their own. Still they are on the lookout to have fun playing fun math and thinking games with other kids or adults.

Did you know kids lose on average 10 weeks of math knowledge over the summer? Usually referred to as the ‘Math Slide’. There are many fun filled math summer camps that focus on math concepts using games and riddles instead of math facts. You can take action at home too: keep the patterns, shapes and numbers going to make sure kids love math. Enjoy playing board games, card games, dice, and domino games. Kids love to discuss their best strategies and to keep score, a math activity in itself.

Download our free Guide to prevent the “Summer-Slide” Click HERE

You are not alone. about 4% to 6% of children will have a math learning disability or Dyscalculia. They will need all the help they can get to work on their math homework.

Specifically for parents in this situation we have recorded videos from Dr. Schreuder explaining how children learn, what good approaches will be and how to work successfully with the best manipulatives to give them that extra that they need.

Also included are about 150 pages of downloadable templates, activities and games. You can access this at MomsTeachMath.com (funny name but our experience is that indeed the Moms end up with the daily homework duties)

It is hard to recognize a learning disability in your child. Many parents do not want to see it, many parents eventually see it late.

HERE is a nice short cheat sheet with the symptoms to look for.

We all want the best for our children and one of the ways to ensure they get the support they deserve in school is to be on the lookout for signs that may indicate something is going on. If you are not sure, TEST, it can never hurt.

You can do a FREE Dyscalculia Screener/Checklist here in the left navigation bar(free registration required)

Or at DyscalculiaTesting.com you can do a more comprehensive Math and Dyscalculia Screening Test for $27.50. This will give you a five page report by email with lots of information.