5 Summer Math Activities for Kids That Make Learning Fun and Easy

Looking for easy ways to keep math learning going during summer break? These summer math activities for kids build math thinking skills–without needing to sit your child down to do a workbook. If you’re looking for even more, we’ve also got a summer math Bingo card you can use with your child!

Summer Math Activity 1. Cook Up Some Math

Invite kids into the kitchen and let them explore math while baking or preparing snacks. Measuring ingredients, doubling a recipe, or dividing a dish between guests all use fractions, multiplication, and division in real life.

Examples:

For younger children: “Give out 4 crackers per person. How many crackers did you give out in total?”

For older children: “We need 1/2 cup of oats, but our 1/2 cup is dirty–what can we use instead?”

Summer Math Activity 2. Take a nature walk and build a collection to do math with

Gather rocks, shells, pinecones, or flower petals and turn them into math moments. Your child can group, sort, count, and compare– building place value understanding and logical reasoning. You can find more guidance on how to use collections to develop critical math ideas here. If your kids like to collect rocks as much as ours do, this one should fit right in. 😉

Examples:

For younger children: “Can you make a pattern alternating stones and flower petals?”

For older children: “Can you group these into tens and see how many we have in all?”

Summer Math Activity 3. Bring out the table games!

Card games, board games, and dice games are fantastic for building number sense, strategy, and problem-solving skills. Use them to break up those mornings or for some family bonding time after dinner!

Examples:

For younger children: Games like Candy Land, Count Your Chickens, or Chutes and Ladders all support the development of the 3 counting principles.

For older children:  Games like Uno, Yahtzee, and even War can spark math talk about greater than/less than, combinations, and probability.

Summer Math Activity 4. Build math questions into your weekly schedule

Try to ask fun, open-ended questions to spark discussion at breakfast or bedtime. These can be silly, real-world, or imagination-based. We’ve got you covered with new questions for you to try each week in our Math Thinking Monday series! Questions like this help build math thinking skills without pressure. 

Examples:

For younger children: Would you rather have 5 blueberries or 2 strawberries? Why?

For older children:  Would you rather have 100 pennies or 8 dimes and a nickel? Why?

Summer Math Activity 5. Make Math Part of the Plan

Share the math with your child that you use when planning trips, outings, or even your grocery list. Let your child estimate time, calculate costs, or figure out distances.

Examples:

For younger children: “Look at the 10 items we just picked out at the grocery store. How many bags do you think we will need to fit them all?"

For older children:  “We’re going to the zoo. It’s 45 minutes away and opens at 10:00—what time should we leave?”

Math is Everywhere—Let’s Keep the Thinking Going!

With these summer math activities for kids, your child can stay math-strong in joyful, low-pressure ways. Remember: math is everywhere–it just takes a little noticing and curiosity to keep it alive!