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?

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.

Kids Who Love Math Homework!

This school year Faleycia Moore is spending more time on her math homework than her teacher demands. Sound unbelievable? Does this ever happen at your house? What’s going on?
Her assignment is: Spend at least half-hour playing math games on an iPod Touch.

Searching for a way to help students who scored below grade level on the math portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test last year, Faleycia’s school in Clearwater decided to experiment with the iPod Touch.

Is it working? There has been a noticeable improvement in such things as students’ comprehension of multiplication tables. Kids are willingly spending two hours a night on math homework.

Is it the use of technology or the use of math games that is making the difference? Undoubtedly it is some of both.

There is no doubt in my mind that, as the Internet continues to play a larger role in education, a growing number of online sites will 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.

Stanley Greenspan, M.D., a clinical professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at George Washington University School of Medicine and author of many influential parenting books, says playing games with parents helps children develop the social skills necessary for getting along with others and is core to their healthy development.

“When you play games with your children”, Greenspan says, “you’re not only connecting and engaging, you’re exchanging back- and-forth emotional signals, which are helping the child regulate mood and behavior, learning to read social signals and learning to communicate. Each of these abilities contributes to a child’s sense of security.”

Seize this opportunity to teach them your values, and indulge them with your own undivided attention. Try a math game with your kids. 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.

Fostering Your Child’s Success in Math

What does math mean to you? Do you remember math as a bunch of rules to memorize, concepts that did not make sense, and assignments unconnected with everyday life?

Regardless of your own experiences, you play an important role in your child’s attitude toward, and success with, math. A strong mathematical background is essential for every child’s future. A solid mathematics education is essential for an informed public, our national security, a strong economy, and national well-being. Mastering challenging mathematics is not just a classroom skill – it’s a life skill.

The following is a National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ list of what families can do to help their children succeed in and enjoy math:

1. Be positive! If you have a negative attitude about math, chances are your child will, too. Help your child have a “can do” attitude by praising your child’s efforts as well as his/her accomplishments. Acknowledge the fact that math can be challenging at times and that persistence and hard work are the keys to success.

2. Link math with daily life. Every day, people face situations that involve math, such as deciding whether one has enough money to purchase a list of items at the store, reading a map to find out where one is, building a budget, deciding on the shortest route to a destination, developing a schedule, or determining the price of an item on sale. Help your child realize that math is a significant part of everyday life.

3. Make math fun. Play math games, solve puzzles, and ponder brain teasers with your child.

4. Have high expectations. You would not expect your child not to read; similarly, you should not expect your child not to do math. Your attitude and expectations are crucial to influlencing the future opportunities for your child.

5. Support homework, don’t do it! Homework is an area that can cause trouble in many households. Relax, and remember whose homework it is. If you take over doing homework for your child, you encourage him/her to easily give up or seek help when working on a challenging problem.

Math Homework and Parents

You get home from work and begin the nightly battle of helping your child get organized to do his/her homework. Bedlam ensues. He/She throws a snizzy (snit + tizzy = snizzy) of impotent frustration. Sound familiar?

Homework (math homework, in particular) often leads to conflict between parents and their children. Homework is then seen in a negative light and often creates a daily battlefield between parent and child.

Most education experts will tell you that it’s best to be engaged in your kids’ homework assignments but not actually do the work for them. Of course, you have to help your kids carve out the time to get the work done and nudge them with little reminders, but when it comes to the actual hands-on work, you’re supposed to keep your hands out of it. Although this isn’t always easy.

An important purpose of homework is to help students develop time-management skills and self-discipline. Students who learn to manage their time effectively and learn to work independently will likely be more successful in school and other aspects of their lives.

The most effective role for parents is that of ‘stage manager’. That means providing encouragement, showing a positive attitude, asking good questions, and making sure your child has a quiet, well-lit place to work, with the needed materials on hand. While your child works, serve as a role model by doing quiet activities of your own nearby.

Give nudges, not answers. Answers stop the thinking.

When your child says, “I don’t know what to do”, or “I don’t know how to do it”, you can help your child most by asking questions. By asking questions instead of giving answers, you can help your child recognize his/her power to do their own work. It is a competence that will be much needed in the real life of their soon-to-be adult world.

Some questions you might ask when your child isn’t sure how to begin:
• What is your assignment today?
• What do you need to do?
• When is it due?
• Do you need anything special to get this done? (a trip to the library? access to a computer?)
• Do you need any supplies?
• For a long-term assignment, would it help to make a schedule?
• Can you tell me about what you already know about this subject or problems?
• What did your teacher tell you about this subject or problem?
• How might you begin? What can you try first?
• Can you make a drawing or picture, or act it out to help you get started?
• Have you done anything like this before?

When your child is working on their homework, ask:
• How can you organize your information?
• What would happen if…? Show me what you did that didn’t work.
• Can you explain how you did this? Why did you…?
• What could you do next?

I know this is easier said than done, but if the homework does not get finished, allow the teacher to deliver the consequences for not completing homework. This will take away the child’s sense of control by yelling, crying, or having a fit that disrupts your evening.

If the homework becomes particularly stressful, take a break and play a math game that correlates to the homework being done.

Taking Time to Understand Time

For years, teachers have observed students’ frustration as they grappled with learning to read an analog clock (as opposed to a digital clock). I remember being frustrated myself and not fully understanding why learning to tell time was so difficult for my students and wondering how to help.

I began to realize that there are two aspects of time that have to be distinguished in teaching time: firstly, one must try to develop a concept of time in a child, and secondly, one must teach the child to “tell the time” (teaching clock time).

Teachers of young children generally concur that their students learn mathematical concepts best when they construct understanding through concrete experiences. When we remember that time can be neither seen nor touched but experienced and measured only indirectly with such tools as clock, we can begin to understand why time-related concepts are difficult for our students to learn.

From the body of research available, as well as from our own firsthand teaching experiences, we know that everything to do with understanding and using time concepts develops rather late. I will go so far as to say that most children do not really fully understand the intricacies of telling time until about the third or fourth grade.

What usually happens in the classroom is that developing the concepts of time is skipped. In keeping with the admonition that children must actively develop concepts of time, I have included a few of the math activities I began to use in my classroom:

Time Intervals

Just How Long Is a Minute?

Have your students close their eyes and you time one minute. Have them keep their eyes closed and put up their hand when they think one minute has passed. Call time at the end of the minute. Now try it again. The more you do it, the better sense of a minute they will have.

Also try some of the following activities:

How many times in one minute do you think (make an estimate) you can:

1. Sing “Happy Birthday”? Estimate ____ Actual _____

2. Touch your toes? Estimate ______ Actual ______

3. Hop on one foot? Estimate ______ Actual ___

4. Do jumping jacks? Estimate ______ Actual ______

5. Write your first name? Estimate ______ Actual ______

6. Run around the basketball court? Estimate ______ Actual ______

7. Draw stars? Estimate ______ Actual _______

8. Recite the alphabet? Estimate ______ Actual _______

9. Snap your fingers? Estimate ______ Actual _______

10. How high do you think you can count in one minute?
Estimate _______ How high did you go? ________

More or Less Than a Minute? Homework

Here are some things you do everyday. For each one, guess whether you think it will take more than one minute or less than a minute to do it. Now try each thing while someone keeps time.

1. Put on your socks and shoes.
Guess ______________ It really took _____________
more or less than 1 minute / more or less than 1 minute

2. Brush your teeth.
Guess ______________ It really took _____________
more or less than 1 minute / more or less than 1 minute

3. Eat a banana.
Guess ______________ It really took _____________
more or less than 1 minute / more or less than 1 minute

4. Read a page from your favorite story.
Guess ______________ It really took _____________
more or less than 1 minute / more or less than 1 minute

5. Pledge Allegiance to the Flag.
Guess ______________ It really took _____________
more or less than 1 minute / more or less than 1 minute

Now make up a short list of things you think will take about one minute, and give them a try.

There are some great games which help children understand time!

Helping Children Learn Mathematics – Count Collections!

As a veteran elementary teacher, I have found that most kindergarten children and many first graders come to school able to rote count to ten, or twenty, or higher. Even though the counting sequence seems to be in place, these children often have difficulty counting objects accurately past five or ten.

After more than 20 years of being an elementary math specialist, I have found that the most important thing parents can do to support their children’s mathematical growth at this age is to count things.