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)

TV and Math

Toddlers who watch a lot of television were more likely to experience a range of problems by the fourth grade, including lower grades, poorer health and more problems with school bullies, a new study reports.

Compared with children who watched less television, those with more TV exposure participated less in class and had lower math grades.

The findings suggest that the differences were strongly linked with television exposure, not parental care, and that excessive television is not good for a developing brain.

Research indicates that early learning has lasting results. When we look at child development studies, we find that between birth and age 7, children enjoy their greatest learning curve. They have a strong, basic desire to learn. They are like sponges, soaking up everything around them. They are unintimidated, curious, eager to learn, and love to be active.

It’s the perfect time to get these children excited about math! How do parents of young children do that? As National Board Certified Teacher with a specialty in early childhood, I strongly recommend that parents use math games to prompt interest and development in math.

I’ve found that math games are, from a teacher’s and a parent’s point of view, wonderfully useful. Math games put children in exactly the right frame of mind for learning. Children are normally very eager to play games. They relax when they play, and they concentrate. They don’t mind repeating certain facts or procedures over and over.

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 and Summer Brain Drain

Summer brain drain іѕ thе widely acknowledged loss οf academic skills whісh happens during the two to three months of summer vacation. Studies cite anywhere frοm аbουt 2.5 months tο 3 months οf learning lost οr forgotten whеn skills аrе nοt being practiced.

Studies show that math skills deteriorate the most. Children forget at least one month of math each summer, and that loss is cumulative. Your child will forget about a year of math instruction over the 12 years of schooling. Many οf thе computational skills whісh generally аrе nοt practiced over thе summer, аrе simply forgotten.

What can parents, who worry аbουt keeping their kids аt thе top οf thеіr game, do? Involve your children in math that keeps their computational skills up and yet is engaging and fun! If pleasure is not a part of what they are doing, neither you or the children will be willing to do it very much or for very long.

I’ve been teaching math to children for many years, and I’ve found that math games are, from a teacher’s and a parent’s point of view, wonderfully useful. Math games put children in exactly the right frame of mind for learning. Children are normally very eager to play games. They relax when they play, and they concentrate. They don’t mind repeating certain facts or procedures over and over.

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.

Games solidify the achievements of children who are already good at math, and they shore up children who need shoring up.

Involve yουr kids wіth math games. They will hеƖр уου know аnԁ focus οn уουr child’s computational weaknesses and strengths. Thіѕ summer, give уουr child thе opportunity tο hаνе fun, ɡеt a step ahead οf thе coming school year, and gain an advantage over their peers.

Polish those math skills with math games thіѕ summer, аnԁ уουr student wіƖƖ shine later!

Kids + Math Games = Super

Parents are their children’s first and most enduring teachers. Even the best teacher your child encounters in school will only be with your child for a year, perhaps two. Even after children enter school, they spend seventy percent of their waking hours outside of the school setting. As a parent, you have greater opportunity to make a difference, to teach, model, and guide your child’s learning, than anyone else. You have a more intimate knowledge of your child’s needs and talents. You have a keener interest in your child’s schooling and future, and deeper motivation to help your child succeed. No one is better placed or more qualified than you to make a difference in your child’s academic and lifelong education.

Keeping in mind the profound impact you can have on your children as readers, writers, mathematicians, and scientists, what can you do to turn your home into a rich learning environment? I don’t mean bring out the worksheets, flash cards, and dittos. It is about offering your children experiences that are most appropriate – learning experiences that are fun for all, a part of your everyday lives, and are deeper, richer, and longer lasting. These kinds of experiences develop children who are more persistent, more creative, and eager to do challenging work.

I have a suggestion for mathematics – math games.

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?

Games offer targeted practice in math fundamentals. And games can, if you select the right ones, 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.

Your kids – whether you’re a parent or teacher – will learn, without even realising they are learning.

Math Games and Summer Vacation

Just because school will soon be out for the summer, it doesn’t mean a child’s brain should stop working. In fact, keeping a child’s mind fresh with review, as well as new ideas, can keep those brains in tip-top shape for the following school year.

During the summer, it is important to help your children retain and enhance what they learned in school. Most kids don’t want to sit down and do anything educational during the summer, so this can present a challenge.

Math skills, particularly, can be hard to retain during summer vacation. Kids may spend hours reading books at the beach and doing crafts at camp, but doing math can be extremely unappealing.

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.

Many years ago I discovered that math games fit the bill wonderfully! Math games put children in exactly the right frame of mind for learning. Children are normally very eager to play games. They relax when they play, and they concentrate. They don’t mind repeating certain facts or procedures over and over. In an engaging math game, children will be more focused and retention will be greater.

Dittos, flashcards, or workbook pages are not appropriate if you want your child to be excited about math. Children throw themselves into playing games the way they never throw themselves into filling out workbook pages or dittos.

Games offer a pleasant way for you to get involved in your child’s math education. You may be one of those many parents who don’t feel comfortable with math, or who assume it takes special expertise to help your child. Believe me, as a veteran teacher, when I say that you don’t have to be a math genius to play a game. With a math game, you don’t have to worry about pushing or pressuring your child. All that you have to do is propose a game to your child and start to play.

Games can help your child learn almost everything they need to master in elementary math. Games solidify the achievements of children who are already good at math, and they shore up children who need shoring up.

There are plenty of fun math games that you and your children can play to help them retain their math skills. Get a jump start on the coming school year! Sit down and play some math games with your children.

Playful Ways to Help Your Child Learn Math

Children are all the same in one way: they love to play games. Put the right game in front of a child, explain the rules, and that child will eagerly play, happy and alert.

Math, on the other hand, can be intimidating for kids. If we understand the nature of a child’s strengths and weaknesses, we can help any child to achieve and feel good in mathematics. It’s a matter of finding the best itinerary and the best route through the subject’s many possible pathways.

They need practical arithmetic experiences that are fun. Playing math games is an effective and engaging one of those possible pathways. Whether you’re a parent or teacher, your children will learn, without even realising they are learning.

One of the things we positively know about children (and adults) is that if pleasure is not a part of what you are doing, you will not be willing to do it very much or for very long.

Many parents regard play as rather trivial in the lives of their young children and would much rather see their kids get involved in “educational” activities. To parents, it often seems that all children do is play! They play until they are five or six, then they go off to school and start to learn. They play until they are big enough to really begin to do things.

The act of playing is an important tool that influences a child’s life. The primary goals of childhood are to grow, learn, and play. It is often through play that children learn to make sense of the world around them. It is a child’s “job” to play to develop physical coordination, emotional maturity, social skills to interact with others, and self-confidence to try new experiences and explore new environments.

Play to a child IS learning! They learn to play and play to learn. Play is terribly important to a child. It is not a distraction. It’s not something they do to take up time. It’s a child’s life.

So, begin to “play” with your child. Math games are a fantastic way to learn as you play.

Math Games + Fun = Learning

Most elementary schools, these days, have after-school programs. Children (of working parents) play organized outdoor games, work on homework, read, do art projects, and watch educational (hopefully) videos.

As an elementary mathematics specialist, I have trained after-school program facilitators to use math games for fun and learning. When kids are having fun, they are more open to learning. When they are having fun, they want to keep doing whatever they are doing.

Practice is provided with math games, minimizing review worksheets and stressful flash cards, presenting a variety of repetition, and creating hours of fun learning math facts and concepts. A student would much rather solve a problem as part of a card game, than doing that same problem on a worksheet! Even better–that same problem will come up again and again in a card game, with the student happily solving it again and again. If you put the same problem on a worksheeet again and again, you get complaints!

Playing fun card games is not a waste of time. Students in after-school programs will think they are getting away with “no work” when they play a math game. With innovative and challenging math games, review and reinforcement are built right in!

The key to helping children practice their math skills willingly is using math games that are effective, engaging, and fun. The idea of mixing math and games is one important segment of how to become a successful after-school center.

Getting Young Children Excited About Math? YES!!

Research indicates that early learning has lasting results. When we look at child development studies, we find that between birth and age 7, children enjoy their greatest learning curve. They have a strong, basic desire to learn. They are like sponges, soaking up everything around them. They are unintimidated, curious, eager to learn, and love to be active.

It’s the perfect time to get these children excited about math! How do parents of young children do that? The NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) has some great suggestions, one of which is to use math games to prompt interest and development in math.

“Play is one of the most important ways children learn about their world and master skills for coping with it. Games are a particularly useful form of play that help children develop mathematical concepts and reasoning and practice basic mathematical skills. In addition to being challenging, interesting, and enjoyable for children, games provide a means for structuring experiences to meet children’s developmental needs. Games can salso serve as an invaluable diagnostic tool. By observing a child playing a particular math game, parents can detect specific strengths and weaknesses in mathematical concepts, reasoning, and skills.”

The following is a very simple, fun game for 3-5 year olds:

Five to Win
What you need:
2- 4 players
cards 1 – 5, 4 of each

The object of the game is to be the first player to get the cards 1 – 5.

Shuffle cards and deal five cards to each player. Place the remaining cards in a pile face down with the last one turned over as a discard pile. Player #1 selects a card from the face-down pile or the discard pile and fits it into sequence in his/her hand. That player must then discard one card to always keep five cards in their hand. Player #2 does the same. When the sequence 1-5 is complete, the player calls out “Five” and lays down their cards.

Variation: As children become more skilled in handling their cards, the sequence 1-10 can be introduced.

Rethinking Math Homework

Parents are concerned about their children’s basic mathematics skills and, oftentimes, ask teachers for more skills-based homework. As a result, teachers send home worksheets and workbook pages so that children can practice basic skills.

I am a firm believer in children learning the basic skills. More and more in my teaching career, I see that children no longer memorize their addition facts or multiplication tables. Students should have math facts at their fingertips, such as addition and subtraction combinations to 20, multiplication tables to 12×12, and related division facts. Children learn some of these facts easily, but memorization is still necessary (and often painful) to learn all of the facts.

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 can offer greater opportunities for their child to succeed in math if they support the learning of the basics at home.

What options other than the traditional rote worksheet exist? Math games fit the bill wonderfully! Teachers, I encourage you to consider sending home math games as a regular part of your homework.

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?

Games are fun and create a context for developing children’s mathematical reasoning. Through playing and analyzing games, children also gain computational fluency by describing more efficient strategies and discussing relationships among numbers. Games teach or reinforce many of the skills that a formal curriculum teaches, plus a skill that math homework sometimes, mistakenly, leaves out – the skill of having fun with math, of thinking hard and enjoying it.

Helping Your Child Build Basic Math Skills

Here are some ways to encourage your child to develop solid math skills throughout the elementary years, suggests an article in Louisville, Kentucky’s Courier-Journal.com.

I agree with every single suggestion except for the last one – “Buy a few inexpensive, age-appropriate math workbooks for your child to use at home.”

As an elementary math specialist, parents often ask for suggestions about activities to do with their children at home to help further their mathematical understanding. I’ve been teaching math to children for many years, and I’ve found that math games are, from a teacher’s and a parent’s point of view, wonderfully useful. Math games put children in exactly the right frame of mind for learning. Children are normally very eager to play games. They relax when they play, and they concentrate. They don’t mind repeating certain facts or procedures over and over.

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.

Games have another use, too. They offer a pleasant way for you, as parents, to get involved in your child’s mathematics education. You don’t have to be a math genius to play a game. You don’t have to worry about pushing or pressuring your child. All that you have to do is propose a game to your 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 (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?