Outdoor Math Activities For Active Kids

By Julie Diamond

When the weather gets nicer it can be challenging to get your child to sit still to do math worksheets. Who can blame them? It's important to continue the learning through the summer so they are confident and ready for September. But math doesn't have to be boring or inside! Get outside, have fun and prevent summer learning loss. Here are some ways you can incorporate math with your child on the go:
1. Painted Rock Scavenger Hunt: Take some paint, or improvise with some nail polish, to paint numbers and/or addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and/or equal signs on each rock to make complete equations. For example, for 4+4=8 you would use 5 separate rocks. Make a few of these equations together with your child then hide the individual rocks around your house, yard or in a small area at the park. Get your child to go on a scavenger hunt to put the rocks together to make the correct equations. It gets them running and learning!
2. Skip Counting with Hopscotch: Use chalk to make a hopscotch up to 20 or for a challenge make it up to 50 or 60. Hopscotch is a great tool to use for making math active. Get your child hopping on one foot to skip count by 2s, 3s, 5s or 10s. This is a great way to prepare your child in grades 1 & 2 for multiplication.
3. Number Line: Using chalk, create a number line from 0 to 20. Unless your child is learning negative numbers, which most provinces are not doing this until grade 6, stick to positive integers. Make your own cards saying things like “subtract 3, add 5, etc” to draw from for the game. This is fun for your child to play with another person to make it more of a race to 20. The players start at 0. Draw a card for the first player. If it says ‘add 5’, and the player is at 0 they run or walk to 5 to ‘add’ 5. Draw a card for the each of the other players. If you draw a subtraction card and it would take the players below 0 then simply draw again. Keep going until a player reaches 20.
4. Patterns with Nature: Start a simple ABCABC or ABBABB pattern using different objects you find outside. You can use pinecones, twigs, rocks, or leaves. Make sure to repeat this same pattern at least twice then ask your child to find the items and continue the patterns. You can make this more challenging with switching up the patterns.
5. Hunting Shapes: Either print or draw the different shapes on a clipboard for your child. Make sure to include a triangle, square, circle, rectangle (if your child is in Kindergarten), and then add arrow, pentagon, oval, rhombus, and/or kite for older kids. Each time they find a shape get them to trace the object (or print the name of the object) on their worksheet and make a mark to keep track of how many of each shape they find.
6. Action Dice: Practice your child's basic addition, subtraction or multiplication with rolling a pair of dice. For an added challenge, add additional dies. Create a small wooden die and write words like 'jump', 'hop', 'skip', 'spin', 'blink, 'tap', etc on each of the sides. You then have your child roll the dice with the wooden die, add/subtract/multiply the dies together then perform that action that many times. For example, if you asked them to add and they rolled a 1 and 3 and hop. Well 1+3=4 so they would have to hop 4 times. 
7. Measure Nature: Give your child a ruler, pencil and a clipboard with a recording sheet of the different things to measure around your yard or at the park. Some examples can include sticks, flowers, leaves, or rocks. Try to choose items that can be measured using the same unit (cm, mm). They can print the item and record how long it was on the recording sheet. You can even take it a step further by creating a graph together! This activity is geared towards grades 3 & 4 but you can make revisions to suit your younger or older child. 
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Share with us in the comments any outdoor math games you like to do with your child.