Olympics in Your Backyard

Can your daughter's love of physical play teach her to love math? Head to your backyard or local park for a fun game of Olympic proportions that will do just that!

What you'll need:
Space for running
A watch with a second hand or a stopwatch
Paper and a pencil/pen
(For older children) measuring tape, a calculator and a soccer ball

What to do:

• Ready! Pump up your child's enthusiasm. Explain that you and your child will be holding your own Olympics and using math to discover new information about how fast she is. This activity will bring math to her real life and will answer the question, "When am I ever going to use this?"

• Set! Mark out a race course. Ask your child how far she can run, and decide on the starting line and the finish line together.

• Go! Start the race. Time your child with your watch as she runs the course, and record the time on your paper. For younger children, let your child practice writing numbers by recording the time herself.

• Repeat the race with variations. Send your child back to the starting line to do the race course again, this time hopping on one foot, skipping, speed-walking, jogging backwards, and more. She'll have her own unique ideas for variations. Remember to record all the race times. For older children, the variations can be more sporty and less silly, for example speed-walking or dribbling a soccer ball.

• Take a breather to process the information. With your child, create a simple bar graph that shows the different race times. (Faster races will have shorter bars, and slower races will have taller bars.) You'll have her attention because children want to learn about themselves. At the same time, she’ll be building a personal connection to math that she can’t get in math workbooks.

• For older children: take it a step further. Measure the distance from the starting line to the finish line. Then, multiply the distance by the race times to calculate your child's speed per second. (For example, if your child runs 100 feet in 50 seconds, then dividing 100 by 50 shows us that your child can run 2 feet every 1 second.) Measurement and multiplication will suddenly become much more interesting, as your child will love the reward of knowing this about herself. If you do the races, too, you and your child can compare your statistics and set improvement goals for future races together.

• Discuss the results. Ask your child to look at the bar graph and compare different times.  Which two races look like they have the most similar times? Which times were the most different? How much faster is this time than that time? Talking about math develops your child's math vocabulary and math comfort level, which will help with word problems and math tests.

• Congratulate your math champion! By sharing this quality math time together, your child will attach positive emotions to math.

Most children learn best by seeing and doing, and this activity will provide math practice that appeals to all learning styles. Chase away the boredom and fear of math by showing your kids what math can teach them about themselves.