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Travel Activities: Road Trip Math

Math Travel Activities

Travel Activities: Road Trip Math

Road trip math not only keeps your child occupied during a long trip, but itcan also practice some of his real-life math skills. From license plates to maps and meals, there are many ways to make your trip a little more "edutaining." Edutainment is a portmanteau word combining the words "education" and "entertainment." It refers to activities that are designed to be entertaining as well as educational.

Skills Being Practiced

• Operational math
• Ciphers
• Percentages
• Money skills

What You Need

• Paper and pencil, or whiteboard and dry-erase markers
• Calculator

How to Play: License Plate Math

1. Your child may be looking at license plates to find different states, but you can also play a few license plate math games along the way, too.
2. Have each passenger find a license plate and write down the number, taking out any letters. Ask your child to read each number to you (if she can), and compare them and see whose number is the largest. Ask: Can you identify the number in the tens place in each license plate? What about the hundreds place? Does anyone's plate have a larger place value than hundreds? What is it? Whose license plate number is larger if you add the numbers on each plate together?
3. Keep track of any vanity plates you see. Use a basic alphanumeric cipher to substitute the letter on plates for numbers. (The easiest code is just giving each letter of the alphabet the number of its position in the alphabet, in which A = 1 and Z = 26.) Calculate to see which vanity plate has the highest numerical value.

More Math Games for the Road

How to Play: Map Math

1. Map math can begin even before your trip does. Take out a map and show him where you are and where you are going. Then show him the map key and explain how it translates to miles.
2. From there you can have your child help you find the shortest route to your destination.
3. Have your child compare his route to the roads you have chosen. Ask: Is the overall distance the same? Does his route have advantages over yours or vice versa? Even if the routes are the same distance, will the speed limit have a bearing on how long your trip takes? Why or why not?

How to Play: Food, Gas, and Tax

1. Even the stops along the way provide you with the chance to teach your child some road trip math, especially if you're buying food or gas along the way.
2. Let your child pay for an item at a rest stop. Give him a certain amount of money and see if he can figure out how much change he should get. Then have him count the change to make sure he got the right amount back.
3. Encourage your child to practice estimate and rounding at restaurants. After each person has decided on a meal, have him round each price up (or down) to the nearest dollar. Then see if he can estimate how much the entire meal will cost. Keep track of his estimation, and see how close he is when the check arrives.
4. Teach your older child to calculate tips. Explain that the tip is usually a certain percentage of the total cost of the meal. To make it a little easier, you may want to stick with amounts like 15 or 20 percent. Give your child the basic equation, filling in the pieces you have, and let him come up with the answer. The equation is: total bill x percentage = tip. So if you ate a $30 meal and wanted to leave a 15 percent tip, the equation would be: $30 x 0.15 = $4.50.