Keeping it Real with Math

A common educational idea in some unschooling circles is "strewing" or littering the child's path through the world with many things to spark their curiosity and engage them in learning. For example, Helena learned a lot of the states geography as well as letter recognition through puzzles I left sitting on end tables in the living room. 

It becomes more challenging to me to figure out how to strew mathematical opportunities throughout real life, especially now that she's kind of past the sorting, simple baking fractions, and abacus stage. 

I'm determined to keep math both fun and meaningful! Meaningful things are remembered. I hated math in school because it made no sense to me and I saw no relationship to my life - despite the fact that I got mostly A's in it. 

So here are two fun projects we've come up with to use math in real life along the lines of Helena's interests. 

First, she'll be running a lemonade and snack stand at our town wide garage sale in  September. 

Second, she's eager to design and build a model, to-scale, tiny house. This will cover a variety of geometry concepts and be one of the earliest preparations for building herself a real tiny house someday. 

How do you use math in real life for older students?