As a novice in the teaching field, I always try many different ways of delivering a lesson to find out which ones are more successful than others. It turned out that if lessons do not include real life situations in them, students eventually lose interest and start daydreaming.
It is not about children being stubborn or picking and choosing what they want to learn about. Kids are smart, and they refuse to exercise their brain muscles for concepts that they view as irrelevant and would not serve them any good in their practical lives. Hence, teachers and parents play an important role in the process of introducing real life math to children. They should take advantage of all opportunities to point out how math is used in their everyday's life.
For instance, if a kid is trying to save some money to buy a toy by doing chores, the parent(s) should help him/her figure out how many chores are required (addition), or at a later stage, the amount left to be able to buy that toy (subtraction).
Road trips could be great opportunities for children to relate speed and travel time. If the child is at a young age, the parent can ask him/her to keep track of how many stop signs they have encountered, or how many different car colours they have passed by, etc.
Sharing between siblings can help them learn about divisions and fractions by introducing the idea of fairness. By splitting a bag of chips, for example, among themselves into equal parts, division becomes a natural process.
Even when a parent is grocery shopping, they can ask their kids' help in figuring out how much money their list is going to cost. They can even calculate if the money would be enough based on a specific budget (addition, multiplication, subtraction, and money concepts).
These are just few ideas that facilitates the basic math concepts for children. There are many other situations that could help kids learn math without even realizing it.
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