Turn Family Math Time Into a Friendly Live Challenge

The most useful thing a parent can do during practice is not to help but to play — answering their own questions alongside, at their own difficulty. It takes the spotlight off the child, and it makes the whole thing a shared activity rather than a supervised test. Keep it short and stop while it is still fun.

Mixed practice is harder than it looks, and usefully so. When every question is addition, a child can switch off and apply one procedure; when the operation changes each round, they have to read the problem first. That reading step is exactly what breaks down in word problems and on tests, so drilling it deliberately is worth the extra difficulty.