Half term –  What a great chance for children to spend some time outside of the classroom! Whether they’re at holiday club, going on day visits to cultural, historical & educational places, or visiting family and friends, it’s fun all around! However, for those of you with the 11 plus in just 6 months time, or SATs looming in the not too distant future, you may be worried about children switching off during their time away from school.

But did you know that you can incorporate problem solving tasks into their daily activities?

Problem solving presents tons of opportunities throughout our day to day lives without us even realising. Imagine you’re organising a day out; you’ve checked the location, worked out the travel time, calculated your time of arrival (considered possible delays, i.e. toilet breaks, or making changes on public transport), worked out what time the children will probably want to eat and figured out how long you’ll spend on the visit. So before you have even left, you’ll roughly know what time you’ll have the kids back home and fed. Right?

This is just one example of how we use Maths and problem solving at home. Keeping your child’s brain active is about getting creative. Asking children to help with simple tasks like shopping lists, cooking, travel times, going to the cinema, or maybe even overlapping t.v shows is an engaging way to not only help you, but to get them involved in brain teasing questions.

What puzzling problem solving tasks can you come up with?

© Copyright 2017 – Key Stages Online