One of the greatest advantages of homeschooling is more opportunity to see how we use knowledge in everyday circumstances. A great place to practice math is at the grocery store. Publix is really great for that with their 2 or 3-for deals and bogo deals. After a few examples of how we calculate how much one costs, they were doing it all through the store.
This had a secondary purpose of teaching James why we couldn't just use the calculator for everything. Sometimes we need to quickly make calculations in our head.
Our first task was to find the best deal on apples. They wanted the shiny red ones. I explained that not only were the red apples dyed to be that uniform red but it was 50 cents more per pound than the Gala apples which taste better to me anyhow. We got 5 apples which ended up being almost 3 lbs. I walked them through rounding up the 1.49 to 1.50 and multiplying it by 3 to make it 4.50. My literal thinker, David, complained that it wasn't 1.50 but 1.49. (When talking about the cost of 99 cents that morning, James said, "That's a dollar." David corrected, "No, that's a dollar minus a penny.") I agreed but explained how much easier it is to multiply 1.50 for us non-mathematical geniuses. He noticed a bag of apples for $4.99. Another example of using math because we could compare that 3 lbs loose was 4.50 (or there about) but in a bag was 49 cents more.
Another good example was finding the cost of one pack of lunch meat. They were 3 for $11. That was a difficult calculation to do in our heads so we rounded up to $12, divided by 3, then subtracted 33 cents to find the cost of one.
When they got to the Little Debbie snacks, they calculated that 2 for $6 meant 1 for $3 or 4 for $12 (hint, hint). They used all their powers of persuasion to explain that 10 for $10 was expensive for lunchables but $1 was very cheap! I think they are finding real life opportunities to use math without the calculator.
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