Teaching Math at Home
Using Gas Prices and Budgeting to Teach Your Children Math
Taking advantage of teachable moments that affect your family's life is an excellent way to introduce and reinforce math skills.
Although the high gas prices may not immediately strike you as a positive thing, using it as a teachable moment in your children’s lives will provide excellent opportunities to work on math skills. Using something that affects everyone, like gas prices, to teach your children math concepts shows first hand how important math is to every day life. This is especially important for children who do not like math, or who have a learning disability in math.
Gas Mileage
Begin by watching various car commercials to see the mileage new cars are getting. Have your children make a list of car types and the gas mileage they get. Explain that the gas mileage is how far a car can drive on one gallon of gas. Each time you fill your car up with gas have your children figure out your mileage for the previous tank of gas by dividing the total number of miles you drove by the number of gallons you put back into the tank.
Next time you shop for a new car, have your children assist in the process by discussing the pros and cons of a new or used car and the effect that gas mileage will have on the actual cost of operating the car. Have your children help you research car types and learn which car might get the best mileage for the type of driving you would be using the car for.
Your children may ask you why different gas stations have different prices, or why the gas prices are continuing to rise. Use this opportunity to discuss the economic topic of supply and demand. When demand goes up and supply is low, the price becomes higher. Different businesses react differently to this supply and demand issue, thus resulting in the differing prices between stations.
Teaching with a Budget
Gas prices are affecting everyone’s budget now a days and are often requiring some to cut down in another area, or even make changes in transportation. Use this opportunity to discuss how budgeting works, why you budget, and how gas prices effect your budget.
If you do not wish to share every detail of your family budget with your children, share the gas portion of the budget alone. For example: if you used to budget $150 a month for gas, you may now have to budget $200 a month for gas. Discuss where the extra $50 has to come from. Does it come from extra income from work? Or does it come from cutting back on the vacation or eating out budget?
Make sure to emphasize how important it is to live within your budget to prevent spending more money than you make. Ask your children to help you come up with ideas on how to help stay in your budget, making sure that some budget items are off limits (obviously cutting back on retirement accounts or electric bills should not happen). Allow your child's learning style to help guide you as you involve your children in the learning process.
These ideas are only a taste of what you can do with your children at home. Here are more math lesson ideas involving the thermometer and the kitchen that use a little creativity to create a safe, rich learning environment for your children.
