Summer 'Brain Drain'

A study performed by the University of Missouri indicates that students, on average, lose 2.6 months of grade-level math equivalency during summer break. This can make for a challenging first few weeks of school, where teachers find themselves needing to review mathematical concepts taught the previous year.

You can support your child’s classroom learning by implementing summertime math activities that are both amusing and educational. The following three ideas top Hire Learning’s list for younger students, where work is disguised as fun!

1. Road Arithmetic: Whether you’re hitting the highway for a family vacation or simply driving 15 minutes to the grocery store, challenge your child to add up the numbers on license plates of passing cars (“C50 36K” = 14). Once she's comfortable playing, throw in a twist by assigning a value (example: 3) to all letters found on the plate (“C50 36K” = 20).
2. Food Fun: Intertwine math concepts into family meal preparation. Before slicing into a pineapple, ask your child to determine how many pieces you should cut if each family member wants four pieces. Or have a build-your-own pizza night, encouraging your child to place twice as many pepperoni on his pie than he did mushrooms. How many would that be? Or bake muffins with the help of your little chef, where he’ll participate and actively learn about common measurements such as a cup, teaspoon and ounces.
3. Change Up: Grab a handful of coins and invite your child to “pay” for common household items. Present her with a lollipop, tell her it costs $0.60, and challenge her to find five different ways to “buy” it using any combination of coins. Or ask her to “pay” for a $1.32 apple with the least amount of coins possible. Continue to choose new items. Put a spin on the game by introducing paper bills as an option for payment.

Want to give your child an even greater boost this summer? Contact Hire Learning today, where we’ll customize a tutoring plan that will sharpen his skills and prepare him for next year’s curriculum.

The Three Hats

I love the puzzle below because it doesn’t seem like there’s enough there to answer it. The secret lies in imagining yourself in the head of each princess as they imagine themselves in the head of their sisters. It requires a fantastic leap of imagination. I’m not going to solve it for you, but consider:

1. What does the eldest sister know about her sisters’ hats?
2. What does the middle sister know from the fact that the eldest sister doesn’t know her own hat?
3. What does it tell us that even with this information she doesn’t know the color of her own hat?

Three princesses are taken prisoner by an ogre. For sport, the ogre puts them in a row from eldest to youngest, so that each sister can only see her younger sisters. Then he blindfolds them and says, “I have three white hats and two black hats. I will put one hat on each of your head. If any one of you can tell me the color of your own hat when I take off your blindfold, I’ll let all three of you go.”

The ogre takes the blindfold off the eldest princess. She looks ahead at the hats on her two younger sisters, thinks, and finally says, “I don’t know what color my hat is.”

The ogre takes the blindfold off the middle princess. She looks ahead at the hat on her younger sister, thinks, and says, “I don’t know what color my hat is.”

Then the ogre takes the blindfold off the youngest princess. She looks ahead into the woods–she can’t see anyone else’s hat. Then she thinks, and says, “I know what color my hat is.”

What color is her hat and how did she know?