Parents are always looking for activities and games to challenge their child’s mind while having fun together. My goal is to help parents and their children enjoy mathematics. When children play with mathematics in their everyday lives, they can grow up loving it.
Children must see that math is not just a subject studied in school but is used constantly in everyday family life. The home is an ideal place in which to learn mathematics because the problems encountered there are real, not just paragraphs in textbooks.
How you encourage and promote your child’s math learning, from preschool to high school, can be pivotal to their attitude toward math and their achievement in this subject area. Children are taught math in school, but research shows that families are an essential part of this learning process. In other words, by doing math with your child and supporting math learning at home, you can make a great difference.
The following is just one of many activities that can help you make math a natural part of your family’s everyday work and play.
Alike and Different (Comparisons)
Pick two objects.
Ask your child what makes them alike. Next, ask your child what makes them different.
For example: apple and orange
Possible responses:
They are alike because they both are food, fruit, have seeds, make juice, come from trees.
They are different because one is orange and the other is red; one has wrinkles and the other is smooth; one has black seeds and the other white; we eat apple peels but not orange peels.
Make a list of what you compared and how they were alike and different.
Play the game over and over, using a different set of objects each time.
Don’t forget to ask your child what’s alike and different about the two of you.
Now give one of my math games a try and continue the learning and the fun!
