The Christmas holidays are always a busy and exciting time. However, when you’re preparing for the 11plus or SATs, the importance of keeping your child’s brain active never quite leaves the back of your mind.

The key to keeping your child engaged is to be creative; you will soon find a variety of different ways to bring in exercises for essential 11+ Maths topics such as time, ratio, money and equations into every day activities.

Julia Massey, Lead tutor at KSOL says:

Christmas preparations are full of exciting Maths based opportunities. From decorating, wrapping and buying presents to baking Christmas delights, you will easily find ways to keep your child’s mind ticking over. Here are a few to get you started:

• Keep a countdown! Work out the days, hours, minutes (or even seconds) until Santa’s arrival. What is the length of time between Christmas Day and the New Year?

• To get the whole family involved, there is nothing like baking! Find a recipe for mince pies or gingerbread men and alter the ‘number to bake’ so your child has to work out the new quantities for each ingredient. For more ideas, we have provided a Christmas activity for gingerbread men!

• You can also bring money exercises into the mix by working out overall cost per recipe, individual ingredients and the end cost per treat. You could even create a budget for buying Christmas presents and bring speed/distance/time into the equation by working out when or if people will receive their gifts in time for the big day!”

So what are you waiting for? Get eating, get creating, get Christmassy!

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