Number Sense at Home

Family members are an important part of every child's education, particularly when it comes to developing a good sense of numbers. And, if children have a good sense of numbers, they'll be able to better handle the mathematics they encounter every day -- both inside and outside the classroom.

Here's some questions that you can ask your children to get them thinking about numbers:

  • How big are the windows in our home? As tall as your little brother? As wide as your arm? Ten times the height of a pencil?

  • Can a piece of lumber that's five feet long fit in your car? How about an eight foot long board?

  • If a recipe serves four and you are having eight for dinner, what can you do to make sure you cook enough?

  • I have to go to the cleaners, pick up a gallon of milk, and return books to the library. How long will that take? What's the best order in which to do these chores?

  • I have ten dollars. Can I buy a roast, potatoes, bread, and milk and have some money left over?

  • About how much should I pay for eight gallons of gas if one gallon costs $1.20?

  • Do we have enough time to watch a movie before you go to bed?

  • When I'm 50, how old will you be?

  • If I have three shirts and two skirts, how many different outfits do I have?

  • There's a 75% chance of rain today. Should you take an umbrella?

    Once you've started on this track, you might want to move into these activities:

  • On a car or bus trip, keep a tally of the colors of the first 20 cars you see. What's the color you see most often? Then look at the next 20 cars. Did the color you see most often change? What do you think this says about favorite car colors?

  • During a half hour of prime-time television, how many minutes of commercials do you see? What is the relationship between minutes of commercials and minutes of programming? Does this change on weekend nights?

  • And speaking of advertising, when they use statistics to sell a product, are they telling you everything? Where was the poll taken? How many people were surveyed? What is the margin of error (how wrong might the poll be)? Who was surveyed? Should their opinion matter to you?

  • The federal debt is forever climbing. How long would it take to count out the debt in one-dollar bills if they could count 100 in a minute?

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