My daughter is running track for her middle school team this year. For years, my son has sat through her various activities – ballet, swimming, and, now, track. One thing I’ve learned from hauling him to all of her activities is to take something to entertain him. I especially look for fun math activities for kids. For her most recent track meet, I decided to use the length of the races to work on his math skills.
For example, I had him calculate how many laps were in a 1600m run. Also, for the relays, he calculated how far each leg of the relay was. To prepare for the activity, I punched out construction paper and wrote the applicable numbers on them. I also included a bag of fruit snacks that included 8 of each of the 4 colors. He used those to help him do the math, too. You could easily adapt this activity for other sports, like baseball and swimming.
The activity was a fun way for him to learn a little bit of math at the track meet. But, he probably enjoyed talking to my daughter’s middle school girlfriends even more than he enjoyed the math activities 😉
Happy Thursday!
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