5 Fun Ways to Keep Maths Skills Sharp Over the Summer
As the school year ends and summer begins, many children (and parents!) are ready for a well-earned break from books, uniforms, and packed lunches. While relaxation is essential, long summer holidays can often lead to a “summer slide”—where pupils forget some of what they’ve learned during term time, especially in maths.
Fortunately, keeping maths skills fresh over the summer doesn’t have to feel like schoolwork. With the right approach, maths can become part of everyday life—fun, active, and even something children look forward to!
As a fully qualified teacher and tutor specialising in English, maths and SEAG Transfer Test preparation, I regularly work with families to help children stay on track in a relaxed, pressure-free way. Here are five fun and practical ideas that parents can use over the summer to boost confidence, reinforce learning, and even sneak in a little revision, without a single worksheet in sight!
1. Turn Cooking into a Maths Adventure
Baking or cooking together is one of the simplest (and tastiest) ways to explore maths at home. Measuring ingredients, adjusting quantities, and timing recipes all involve key maths skills your child needs. Numerous mathematical skills are required when baking, such as weight/capacity, fractions, time, multiplication and division.
Ask your child to read a recipe and calculate how to double or halve it. Challenge them to weigh out ingredients using kitchen scales, estimate how long things will take, or set a timer. You can even talk about budgets and shopping lists for the ingredients—great for applying real-world maths. Plus, there’s a cake (or tray of buns) at the end of it!
2. Use Pocket Money to Practise Budgeting
Money is a brilliant way to practise real-life maths, and many children find it highly motivating when it involves their own pocket money or savings. Providing children with pocket money helps them understand money and assists in their understanding of mathematics. Necessary mathematical skills include addition and subtraction, estimation, and calculating change
and understanding value and budgeting.
Next time you go to a shop, let your child make a small purchase. Ask them to calculate how much they’ll need, what change they’ll receive, or which item offers the best value. If they’re saving up for something over the holidays, help them work out how many weeks it will take to reach their goal.
3. Play Maths-Based Board
When it comes to learning through play, board and card games are goldmines. They help children practise maths in a fun, social way—often without them even realising they’re doing it. Board games develop mental maths, number bonds, and probability. Games like Snakes and Ladders or Monopoly Junior all involve counting or basic operations.
These quick games are perfect for lazy afternoons, car journeys or rainy days, and they build fluency and confidence without pressure.
4. Create a Summer Maths Jar
A maths jar is a fun and flexible way to keep maths ticking over in a light-hearted manner. All you need is a jar (or bowl) and some small slips of paper. On each slip, write a simple challenge or problem.
Once a day, your child picks out a challenge. The benefit of this activity is that you can target particular areas your child may be struggling with.
Examples of challenges could include: Find five things in the house that are longer than 30cm, measure the perimeter of your bedroom or draw a symmetrical pattern using coloured pencils. You can adjust the difficulty depending on your child’s age and ability. This method adds a little structure without taking up much time—ideal for busy families or children reluctant to sit still for long!
5. Track Time and Timetables
If your family uses a summer schedule or goes on holiday, let your child be in charge of tracking time. They can practise reading analogue and digital clocks, calculating how long activities will take, and interpreting timetables. For example: “If we leave at 10:30 and it takes 1 hour and 40 minutes to get there, what time will we arrive?” Time is a crucial SEAG topic, and working with real clocks and journeys is far more memorable than worksheets.
A Final Thought for Parents & Guardians
Summer should be relaxing and enjoyable, but that doesn’t mean learning has to stop. By weaving maths into your everyday routines, you’ll help your child maintain key skills.Even 10–15 minutes a day can make a real difference when September comes around.
Summer is a fantastic time for children preparing for the SEAG Transfer Test to build confidence at a steady, manageable pace. If you’d like expert support with tailored maths or English revision or are unsure how best to help your child, I offer small group sessions throughout the year, including the summer months. If you feel you have the time to help with your child’s education yourself, helpful videos and activities are abundant on the BBC Bitesize website. You can explore these by clicking on the following link. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/z826n39