Maths simply isn’t seen as recreational. Whereas, all children as toddlers have a fascination for maths, such as counting and rearranging objects, puzzles, games with dices, shapes and patterns. It is all that a child needs to get inspired by maths.
A very important step to get your kids love math is to stop hating it yourself. Your kids don’t have to feel that way. You have to help them achieve that. Since you spend most of the time with your children, they will learn everything from you and so it is your responsibility to take an active role in making math fun for them and to show them that it is not just confined to classroom walls, but it is there everywhere.
Games
Fun filled activities are the most assured way to stimulate and hold a child’s interest and engage them. Nowadays there are so many apps that can be downloaded that have number games for toddlers. Every game needn’t be a number oriented game. Building blocks, jigsaw puzzles, Rubik’s cube help develop spatial understanding and reasoning. Board games involving dice makes counting fun. It shouldn’t be made obvious that you are trying to teach your child. Make it fun.
Daily Activities – A Math Exercise
Making daily household chores into a math exercise is another easy way to subconsciously make them use maths. Asking them to count the number of toys they have or count their clothes while rearranging the closet, help them practice math and use it in their way of thinking. It shows the practical side of maths.
Monitoring Your Child’s Homework
Make sure your child’s homework has some creative problems as well that tests their understanding of concepts rather than dry problems. Involve yourself with the school work and talk to teachers about including something fun in the curriculum. This would help you know what your children is learning and would be easier to complement this with daily activities at home.
Let them Teach you
Make your children teach you about what’s happening in their schools. This way, they will have to understand and familiarize themselves with the concepts they study to explain it to you and explaining someone a theory makes them memorize it easier. Probably a little tuition fee would perk this whole activity up. This would boost their confidence as well as it makes them feel like an expert and that they got there on their own.
Struggling is Normal
Instead of sending the child for tuitions as soon as they start struggling with math creates a stigma and the child might feel discouraged. Tell them that it is supposed to be hard and that it isn’t the same as failing. Learn their style of doing math and suggest them different techniques.
Never give up supporting your children even if they are not interested in all the games or activities that you have tried. Catch that one thing that they might be interested in and branch out from that. Every child is unique and would need personalised methods to teach them. Mathnasium’s personalised methods build math knowledge upon what they already know, which helps them boost confidence and feel less intimidated. They have specially trained instructors that work with each student and help them master their material with no homework. It is designed to make math fun, as it should be for children.