Helping Your Child Learn Math
Have you ever been amazed by someone who can calculate discounts, distances to a destination, interest rates that will yield the best investment, profit/loss on shares, with awesome speed? No doubt these people have a love for everything mathematical. Children love learning. We can easily help our children develop a love for everything mathematical.
Math learning is great fun at home. You don’t need specialized resources. Everything you need is in your home at this moment. You need enthusiasm and a creative mind to find math opportunities.
Math doesn’t just happen at school; in fact math is every where. Math is part of our world. Quick reasoning, problem solving skills and accuracy and speed in computation are vital skills in our technologically oriented world.
We rely on math almost every minute of every day. From awakening when our alarm goes off to resetting our clocks for next day. We constantly perform math calculations during the day. Time: 2 minutes to get to the train, 30 minutes to get this job done, an hour before the school bus arrives, birthdays, Valentines Day, Spring Break, Thanksgiving. Money: cash, credit card transactions, bank balances, meals, pocket money for the kids, bills, bills and more bills. Measurement: traveling, exercising, building, cooking, shopping.
Today’s children need to be able to problem solve, reason mathematically, use math language and apply math in almost every aspect of their lives. Our children have grown up with calculators and computers. Despite this they need to be able to know when an answer makes sense or is reasonable.
Calculators and computers are tools. They do not have thinking power- they are able to perform complicated calculations at lightning speed but they rely on the accuracy of the data input. They are only as useful as the person who puts in the numbers. The user needs to be able to determine whether the answer given is reasonable- does it make sense? To be able to determine this you must be able to estimate the approximate answer and in doing so key in the correct operation (+,-, X, /).
Start to find the fun in math with your child today. Help them to learn and enjoy applying math thinking to everyday situations. Make a game of it. Estimate the outside temperature and check with your thermometer. Guess the weight of your shopping and then weigh the parcels. Having fun with math with your child can develop a real love of number problems and thinking.
It’s really easy. You’ll be amazed at how you will come up with great ideas and activities. Play counting games, recite number rhymes, cook, shop, and look for shapes in your home; the activities depend on the age of your child. Read and create timetables, use tallies to find out how many cars pass your house, count the letters you get, add the numbers in the zip codes.
Interesting math travel activities keep the kids occupied when traveling long distances. Try adding the numbers in 10 car and truck license plates and compare which is greater/smaller. Tally the number of red cars that pass your car, continue to subtract distance traveled from total length of journey, and record the cost of gas and food and total at end of trip, estimate the time it will take to complete a trip, even record temperatures every 20 miles. Real life activities such as these help kids to see how math skills are used constantly and this helps them understand the reasons for learning math.
Encourage your children to talk about how they solve math problems. Help them to think about their math thinking. This is called metacognition – thinking about thinking. Think what processes and strategies they used to reason out a solution. Even very young children can do this. Build a positive attitude to math by incorporating math tasks and thinking into everyday activities. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how quickly your child will develop a love for math.
Columbia Lee
For the team at
mightydigitaldownloads.com
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October 5th, 2008 at 9:05 am
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