Parents and Children Doing Mathematics at Home

Many parents claim that math is not their forte. Math was hard for them in school, they did not like the subject, and seem resigned to the idea that their children will not do well in math because they themselves had not done well. As a result, they do not know how to help their children in math.

“Ongoing parental involvement in mathematics – as in any subject – can provide a solid foundation for children’s learning and attitudes. When parents maintain high expectations for their children’s performance in mathematics, regularly do mathematical activities with their children, and display a positive attitude toward mathematics, children benefit. They are more likely to feel confident in their abilities; to enjoy and learn more from the mathematics they experience at school; and to develop a sense of richness, usefulness, and pervasiveness of mathematics”. So says Marlene Kliman, whose current work focus is on developing materials and methods for involving parents and their children in doing mathematics together.

Learning math takes effort and interest on the part of the learner and support on the part of the parent. And while math seems to come “naturally” to some people, most of us need to work at it.

You have what you need to help your child with math because:
• You have a great deal of important mathematical knowledge to share.
• Children learn best from the people who most accept and respect them.
• Learning is more lasting when it takes place in the context of familiar home experiences.
• 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.

There is a wonderful way to take the pain and drudgery out of helping your child with math and effectively instill in your child an interest in math – play math games. I can hear you muttering to yourself, “Play math games? Is that legal? Are you allowed to have fun with math?” The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics says, “Make mathematics fun!”

Math games for kids and families are the perfect way to reinforce and extend the skills children learn at school. They are one of the most effective ways that parents can develop their child’s math skills without lecturing or applying pressure. When studying math, there’s an element of repetition that’s an important part of learning new concepts and developing automatic recall of math facts. Number facts (remember those times tables?) can be boring and tedious to learn and practice. A game can generate an enormous amount of practice – practice that does not have kids complaining about how much work they are having to do. What better way can there be than an interesting game as a way of mastering them?

This summer keep your child’s mind fresh with review, as well as new ideas, and keep those brains in tip-top shape for the following school year – play math games!

Math Games for Summer Break

Statistics show that over the summer break, most students lose an average of two to three months of math computational skills they learned during the previous school year. This loss of learning can mean an academic setback for some children that can take weeks, and in some cases months, to remedy when the school bells ring in the fall.

“U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has characterized the effects of “summer learning loss” as “devastating” and “well-documented.” And according to a 2009 report by McKinsey and Company, this backsliding represents a cost of as much as $670 billion to the nation’s economy.”

For educators in Florida and Texas, the concerns over losing ground academically over the summer were critical. They decided to try a particular, specialized math video game.

“As they compete, students build upon basic skills like multiplication, division, and fractions, which in later years will lead to mastery of everything from proportions, number lines, and adding and subtracting integers; to order of operations, evaluating expressions, employing function tables, and solving complex equations.”

The video game that the educators in Texas and Florida were using is good but expensive. There are many online sites that host free math games, most of which are challenging, exciting, fun, and age-appropriate. That’s all well and good.

But above all else, children crave time spent with their parents. Because learning is a social process, children learn best through fun games and activities that involve interaction with other people.

There are plenty of fun math games that you and your children can play to help them retain their math skills.

Seize this opportunity to teach them your values, and indulge them with your own undivided attention. A price cannot be put on the quality of the time you will have spent with your children. They will have fun while learning, and they will remember those times with greater fondness than the times they spent playing the educational computer game.

And lastly but of great importance, among the obvious benefits of sitting down and playing a good game with your children is the opportunity that games provide to apply and solidify the mathematical reasoning and calculating skills your children are learning in school. When children play on-line or video games, parents may know how the child scores, but do they know where they made mistakes and why? Playing games with your child offers you, as a parent, a greater opportunity to know what your child’s strengths and weaknesses in mathematics are.

Get a jump start on the coming school year! Sit down and play some math games with your children.

Math Games = Learning + Summer Fun

Mathematics is a subject that is absolutely necessary for functioning adequately in society. More than that, mathematics is a subject that should be more enjoyable than it sometimes is. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has identified the appreciation and enjoyment of mathematics as one of the national goals for mathematics education. This goal, coupled with the task of nurturing children’s confidence in their ability to apply their mathematical knowledge to solve real-life problems, is a challenge facing every parent today.

Parents’ attitudes toward mathematics have an impact on children’s attitudes. Children whose parents show an interest in and enthusiasm for mathematics around the home will be more likely to develop that enthusiasm themselves. You Can Help Your Young Child Learn Mathematics, available in both English and Spanish, helps parents communicate the importance of mathematics to their children and become more involved in their children’s mathematical education. This pamphlet discusses ways that parents can help their children develop good study habits, and it presents activities through which families can make mathematics a part of their daily lives as they travel, cook, garden, and play games.

It is essential that, over the summer vacation, parents create active and memorable learning experiences for their children in math. Playing math games with their children is an effective way for parents to fulfill part of their responsibility for developing their children’s abilities to do mathematics, while at the same time having fun together, and encouraging more positive attitudes toward mathematics.

Teachers know that the several months off for summer vacation sees considerable slippage in their students’ math skills. Kids who practice summer math will have an easier time transitioning back to school, while kids who don’t may lose a couple months of learning.

Don’t let this summer be a math-avoidance time. Who says math has to be something your child dreads? It should, instead, be something the child looks forward to and thrives on. The trick is to teach your kids math by combining it with fun activities such as math games. All you need is a deck of cards and/or two dice!

Math Games for Second Graders

If you are the parent of a child who has just finished second grade and will be going into the third grade in a month or two, how are you going to keep his/her math skills honed so that he/she is completely ready for third grade math? As an elementary math specialist, I have found that math games are perfect summer skill sharpeners.

By the end of grade two, students should:

• understand place value and number relationships in addition and subtraction
• use simple concepts of multiplication
• be able to measure quantities with appropriate units
• classify shapes and see relationships among them by paying attention to their geometric attributes
• collect and analyze data and verify the answers.

As a veteran second grade teacher, I have found that understanding place value and number relationships is the most important skill that second graders need to practice and master.

The following games are two of many second grade/third grade games that help children understand and have fun with place value:

Who Will Win?

What you need:
2 players
1 die
deck of cards, 10s and face cards removed
counters (pennies, paperclips, etc.)

Player #1 takes a card and turns it over for all to see. Player #2 does the same. Player #1 takes a second card and turns it over for all to see. Player #2 does the same. Each player uses his/her two cards to make a two-digit number. Players say their numbers out loud. Player #1 rolls the die to determine who will earn a counter.

1,3,5 odd roll – the lower number earns a counter
2,4,6 even roll – the higher number earns a counter.

Players continue building numbers and alternating the throw of the die. The first player to accumulate 10 counters is the winner.

Get Close to 100

What you need:
2 – 4 players
deck of cards, 10s and face cards removed
paper and pencils for each player

The object of the game is to make a two-digit addition problem that comes as close to 100 as possible.

Shuffle cards and place them face down in a pile.

Player #1 turns over 4 cards and moves the cards around until he/she has created a two-digit addition problem whose sum will be as close to 100 as he/she can make it. Player #1 records this problem on his/her recording sheet. Player #2 checks for addition accuracy.

Example: Player #1 draws a 4, a 7, a 2, and a 5. He/she moves the cards around until she/he decides that 47 + 52 = 99 is the closest that he/she can get.

Player # 2 draws four cards and does the same.

The points for each round are the difference between their sum and 100.
Example: A sum of 95 scores 5 points and so does a sum of 105.

Players compare scores at the end of this first round. They put their four cards in a discard pile and player #2 begins first and turns over four more cards for the second round.

After six rounds, players total their points and the player with the lowest score wins.

Memorizing Multiplication Facts

Memorizing multiplication facts is an essential part of elementary education. A student who has mastered multiplication gains a solid foundation for achievement in mathematics throughout high school and beyond.

More and more in my teaching career, I see that many children struggle to memorize the multiplication tables. With the math curriculum as extensive as it is, teachers cannot afford to take the time to ensure that students learn the basic facts (sad, but true). Parents are partners in the process, and you can offer greater opportunities for your child to succeed in math if you support the learning of the basics at home. Math games fit the bill wonderfully!

Math games for kids and families are the perfect way to reinforce and extend the skills children learn at school. They are one of the most effective ways that parents can develop their child’s math skills without lecturing or applying pressure. When working on multiplication, there’s an element of repetition that’s an important part of developing automatic recall of the multiplication facts. They can be boring and tedious to learn and practice.

A game can generate an enormous amount of practice – practice that does not have kids complaining about how much work they are having to do. What better way can there be than an interesting game as a way of mastering them?

Give these games a try:

Buzz (try this game in the car, or while everyone is doing the dishes, etc.)

This game is used to review a specific fact family. The leader chooses a number between 2 and 9. The leader says 1, the next player says the 2, and so on. When they reach a multiple of the number chosen, the player says “buzz” instead of the number. If a player forgets to say buzz or says it at the wrong time, he or she is out. Play continues until the group reaches the last multiple of the number times 10.

What’s Your Number?
On a piece of paper write a multiplication problem that your child is having a hard time remembering, (e.g. 7×8). Pin it to the child where he/she can easily see it.The child no longer has a name. When someone wants to speak to the him/her, they must call them by their answer (e.g. “56”).

Break My Eggs

Write numbers in the bottom of egg cartons. Write 1 through 6 in the top row and 7 through 12 in the bottom row. Put two buttons in the egg carton. Close the lid. Player #1 shakes the carton and multiplies the two number together. If Player #1 gets the correct answer, he/she gets a point. Player #2 shakes the egg carton and does the same. After 20 rounds, or 10 minutes, the player with the most points wins the game.

Want other great multiplication games – there are many! See the third grade manual of games.

Math Games and Math Homework

The finding by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel declared math education in the United States “broken” and called on schools to focus on teaching fundamental math skills that provide the underpinning for success in high tech jobs.

The panel said that students must be able to add and subtract whole numbers by the end of third grade and be skilled at adding and subtracting fractions and decimals by the end of fifth grade.

One of the ways that we, as teachers, have traditionally given students more practice on their math skills is homework, and yet, eighty-four percent of kids would rather take out the trash, clean their rooms, or go to the dentist than do their math homework.

So how can we help our students with their math skills and make math homework more engaging? Math games!

More and more in my teaching career, I see that children no longer memorize their addition facts or multiplication tables. With the math curriculum as extensive as it is, teachers cannot afford to take the time to ensure that students learn the basic facts (sad, but true!). Parents are partners in the process and will offer greater opportunities for their children to succeed in math if they support the learning of the basics at home. Games fit the bill wonderfully!

Games offer a pleasant way for parents to get involved in their children’s education. Parents don’t have to be math geniuses to play a game. They don’t have to worry about pushing or pressuring their children. All that parents have to do is propose a game to their child and start to play.

Math games for kids and families are the perfect way to reinforce and extend the skills children learn at school. They are one of the most effective ways that parents can develop their child’s math skills without lecturing or applying pressure. When studying math, there’s an element of repetition that’s an important part of learning new concepts and developing automatic recall of math facts. Number facts can be boring and tedious to learn and practice. A game can generate an enormous amount of practice – practice that does not have kids complaining about how much work they are having to do. What better way can there be than an interesting game as a way of mastering them?

Math Games Keep Kids Smart Over Summer Break

Summer slide, also called summer learning loss, is real. All students experience some type of learning loss if they do not engage in educational activities during the summer, says Ron Fairchild, CEO of the National Summer Learning Association (summerlearning.org).

Most elementary students lose about two months of grade-level learning in mathematical skills over the summer. “If a third-grader learns a math skill in May and doesn’t practice it for two months, she will probably lose it. Her fourth-grade teacher will have to reteach that skill in the fall.”

You don’t need to be a teacher to help your children stay smart during the summer. “You just need to carve out time each day for playful learning activities that tap kids’ curiosity”, says an article in the Detroit Free Press.

Parents often get caught up in having their child do math workbook pages from some expensive book that they order or buy from a teacher store. Just give them authentic, real world experiences where learning can take place naturally. Math games are much more appropriate and engaging than workbooks, dittos, or even flashcards.

Children throw themselves into playing games the way they never throw themselves into filling out workbook pages or dittos. And games can help children learn almost everything they need to master or practice in elementary math. Good, child-centered games are designed to take the boredom and frustration out of the repetitive practice necessary for children to master important math skills and concepts.

Playing math games is even more beneficial than spending the same amount of time drilling basic facts using flash cards. Not only are games a lot more fun, but the potential for learning and reasoning about mathematics is much greater, as well. In a non-threatening game format, children will be more focused and retention will be greater.

Math games for kids and families are the perfect way to reinforce, sharpen, and extend math skills over the summer. They are one of the most effective ways that parents can develop their child’s math skills without lecturing or applying pressure. When studying math, there’s an element of repetition that’s an important part of learning new concepts and developing automatic recall of math facts. Number facts (remember those times tables?) can be boring and tedious to learn and practice. A game can generate an enormous amount of practice – practice that does not have kids complaining about how much work they are having to do. What better way can there be than an interesting game as a way of mastering them?

Helping Your Child with (Mental) Math

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 are some important things you should know and do:

1. Problems can be solved in different ways. While some problems in math may have only one solution, there may be many ways to get the right answer. And remember, the way you solve a problem may not be the way your child solves the very same problem. Learning math is not only finding the correct answer, it’s also a process of solving problems and applying what you have learned to new problems. If their way of solving the problem gets the job done, let them give it a try.

2. Wrong answers can help! While accuracy is always important, a wrong answer could help you and your child discover what your child may not understand. The wrong answer tells you to look further, to ask questions, and to see what the wrong answer is saying about the child’s understanding. It is highly likely that when you studied math, you were expected to complete lots of problems using one, memorized method to do them quickly. Today, the focus is less on the quantity of memorized problems and memorized methods and more on understanding the concepts and applying thinking skills to arrive at an answer.

3. Doing math in your head is important. Have you ever noticed that today very few people take their pencil and paper out to solve problems in the grocery store, restaurant, department store, or in the office? Instead, most people estimate in their heads, or use calculators or computers. Using calculators and computers demands that people put in the correct information and that they know if the answers are reasonable. Usually people look at the answer to determine if it makes sense, applying the math in their head (mental math) to the problem. This, then, is the reason mental math is so important to our children as they enter the 21st century. Using mental math can make children become stronger in everyday math skills.

In terms of mental math, here are some questions you might ask your 3rd through 6th graders (no pencils and paper allowed):

Start off easy with –

98 + 47

51 + 99

146 – 101

5 x 99

150 + 199

137 – 99

99 + 49

4 x 24

58 + 16

65 – 19

Then increase the level of difficulty with –

You buy an $80. dress which has been reduced 20%. How much did it cost?

What is 3/8’s of 40?

6 ½ – 2 ¼ =

What is 75% of 32?

What is 10 squared divided by 5?

You get the idea. Now think of real-life questions that you face every day.

Summer Math for the Fun of It!

Summer is coming. What are you going to do to keep your child’s math skills from losing ground? Research has shown that there is clearly a case for use it or lose it with math. Teachers know that students return to school in the fall with a 1 to 2 month loss in math skills. Not good, and definitely not necessary.

Carrie Launius, a veteran teacher, has this to say in her article titled, “Keeping Kids Busy During Summer”, “Card games like solitaire are very good for kids to practice mental math and math thinking as well as Gin, Rummy, or Spades”.

It is essential that, over the summer vacation, parents create active and memorable learning experiences for their children in math. “Children learn more effectively when information is presented through the use of active learning experiences instead of passive ones”, reports Marilyn Curtian-Phillps, M. Ed.

Parents often get caught up in having their child do workbook pages from some expensive book that they order or buy from a teacher store. Just give them authentic, real world experiences where learning can take place naturally. Math games are much more appropriate and engaging than workbooks, dittos, or even flashcards.

Children throw themselves into playing games the way they never throw themselves into filling out workbook pages or dittos. And games can help children learn almost everything they need to master in elementary math. Good, child-centered games are designed to take the boredom and frustration out of the repetitive practice necessary for children to master important math skills and concepts.

Playing math games is even more beneficial than spending the same amount of time drilling basic facts using flash cards. Not only are games a lot more fun, but the potential for learning and reasoning about mathematics is much greater, as well. In a non-threatening game format, children will be more focused and retention will be greater.

Math games for kids and families are the perfect way to reinforce, sharpen, and extend math skills over the summer. They are one of the most effective ways that parents can develop their child’s math skills without lecturing or applying pressure. When studying math, there’s an element of repetition that’s an important part of learning new concepts and developing automatic recall of math facts. Number facts (remember those times tables?) can be boring and tedious to learn and practice. A game can generate an enormous amount of practice – practice that does not have kids complaining about how much work they are having to do. What better way can there be than an interesting game as a way of mastering them?

Here’s an example of a great game for children who need to sharpen their multiplication skills:

Salute Multiplication

What you need:
2 players
deck of cards, face cards removed

Shuffle deck and place face down in a pile.

Player #1 turns over the top card and places it face up on the table for all to see.

Player #2 draws a card and does not look at it. Player 2 holds the card above his or her eyes so that player #1 can see it, but he can’t.

Player #1 multiplies the 2 cards mentally and says the product out loud.

Player #2 listens and decides what his or her card must be and says that number out loud.

Example: Player #1 turns over a 6 for all to see. Without looking at it,
player #2 puts a 4 on his forehead. Player #1 mentally
multiplies 6 x 4 and says, “24”. Player #2 must figure out
6 x ? = 24.

Both players decide if the response is correct. If it is, player #1 gets 1 point.

Players reverse roles and play continues until one player has 10 points.

Exploring Math with Your Child

Many parents don’t feel comfortable with math, or they assume it takes special expertise to teach it. Remarks like “I never was any good at math” or “How can I help my child with math? I can’t even balance my checkbook!” are common. However, even parents who feel this way use mathematics all the time. They hand out lunch money, cut sandwiches into quarters, calculate how much paint or wall paper they need to buy, estimate how much a trip will cost, read and interpret graphs, talk about the probability of rain, and decide that it’s time to fill the gas tank. Some of them knit, piece quilts, measure wood for cutting, decide how many cups of spaghetti sauce they need to make for 6 people, and use metric tools to work on their cars. The list goes on and on.

Many adults also feel they aren’t doing things the right way, that they aren’t really using mathematics, because their approaches, even though they work, are not the methods they learned in school. There are, in fact, many ways to do mathematics, and more than one can be right. People who devise their own strategies for finding answers to mathematical questions, far from being mathematically incompetent, are often excellent independent problem solvers. They are using mathematics creatively.

You have what you need to help your child with math because:

• You have a great deal of important mathematical knowledge to share.

• Children learn best from the people who most accept and respect them.

• Learning is more lasting when it takes place in the context of familiar home experiences.

• 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 one of my favorite get-the-family-involved math activities. It is an engaging learning experience and a lot of fun!!!

The Washcloth Toss

Have each member of your family estimate (make a smart guess) how far they can throw a dry washcloth. Record your estimates. Now throw the washcloth. Measure and record how far the dry washcloth really went. The person closest to their estimate wins.

Now do it again, making an estimate first. Then throw the dry washcloth again, and measure and record how far it went. Were you any closer to your estimate this time? Who won?

Wet your washcloth this time. Estimate how far you think you can throw the wet dishcloth and record your estimates. Now throw the wet washcloth. Measure and record how far the wet washcloth really went. The person who is closest to their estimate is the winner.

Now do the wet washcloth experiment again, making an estimate first. Throw the wet washcloth again, and measure and record how far it went. Were you any closer to your estimate this time?

Which washcloth went farther – the dry one or the wet one?

Why do you think that happened?

Who is the dry washcloth winner? (closest to estimate)
Wet winner? (closest to estimate)