I often have parents ask what students can do over the summer either to remediate their work from the school year or to prepare for the year that lies just around the corner. While students may NEED to beef up their fact practice, it is not my first preference for summer studies.
My greatest fear is that students will practice their math facts, or work through multiplication problems, or long division, or other algorithms and make mistakes that no one catches. I encourage kids who want to work on those base skills to use a program online that will correct them immediately like ixl.com or KhanAcademy.org. If they are using pencil and paper, please correct the problem as soon as they are done. I would rather that they do 3 problems and correct them immediately, find their mistake or know that they are going in the right direction than an entire page of problems all done incorrectly and no one ever knows. Math practice can hurt you if you aren't careful.
My preference, however, is to let kids BE mathematical. Talk to them about how far, how much, how many as much as possible. Problem Solve, cook, garden. Share equally (or not) and talk about how fair or not fair something is. What are the chances of something happening? Play board games and card games and make up new games. That is what I prefer for my students in the summer time, and always. It is wonderful to be great at calculating and fantastic if you know all of my multiplication tables through 12, but it doesn't necessarily make you mathematical. Being mathematical is about thinking and questioning and problem solving. Estimating, predicting and creating....these are the tools mathematicians really need to fine tune over the summer. If you and your child spend time thinking mathematically, you will quickly see that they are, in fact, practicing their math facts without even realizing it. When students are being mathematical and thinking mathematically, they NEED to calculate, estimate and check to see if they were accurate. Those things have purpose...and when they realize that...they will be ready to come to school in the fall and be mathematical with me.
