Can you guess what would be the earliest age when the child start disliking mathematics?
You would be surprised as per many research results “It is age 5-7 years”.
Now imagine if you are not paying attention then there is a high chance that it would go completely unnoticed and detected at a later stage when this dislike would have turned into “fear for maths” and on it way to become a ‘Math phobia”.
I am listing here some well researched, easy and practical ways on ‘how to teach maths in an interesting way’ at home. Even if you implement few of these idea’s in spirit then you would see a positive movement is child’s interest and his attitude towards maths learning.
Math is one of key skill which every parent would like to see in their child but many of parents would not know exactly what needs to be done to achieve this goal, especially when they see their child is struggling with maths.
The reason what motivated me was the ease of implementing simple maths teaching strategies which can be implemented by every family where we have literate parents / guardians and it just needs little willingness & guidance to make it happen.
In a last decade I have come across many adults at different positions who have confessed their fear for maths which still exist deep inside with them and it negatively impacts their self-worth for many-many years. The root cause to this problem is the way maths being taught in early years.
Why Maths is so hard ?
Before we dive into ways to make maths learning more engaging and interesting it is important for us to understand what actually makes maths so hard to grasp.
Mathematics is very different as compared to other subjects, it’s foundation is abstract and it has lots of formulas & theorems. Traditionally the way maths teachers used to teach maths was to mostly rely on little explanation, doing sum on the black board and then students jotting down on their note books. Students in this manner mostly left with little understanding of the concept and no other choice but to do the rote learning.
How to teach maths in an interesting way at home just in 5 easy steps
In today’s time how to teach mathematics effectively to your child is not that difficult even for a normal parent. As there is a lot of research being done & lot of easy techniques of teaching mathematics has been explored, tested and adopted. Following are the few ways which you can use at home to engage you child in a positive maths leanings.
How to Make math fun:
This is extremely important aspect as we need to create and sustain the interest in mathematics, so as a parent you need to learn ‘how to make math fun’. The whole idea is if the child losses interest in mathematics then it becomes extremely difficult to get him/ her back on the track and on the other hand if the child is genuinely interested then child would be internally motivated to complete many math tasks and would save your lot of time and efforts.
There can be many ways to make math fun, it can via playing maths games like Bingo, Manopoly etc or snake & ladder. Following actions are effective and goes a long way in motivating & achieving maths learning goals.
Incorporate Hands-on-mathematics approach:
As maths is a very practical subject so if you teach and make child learn maths by way of doing it using hands-on- tools for maths, then it would have profound impact the way child gets its first understanding of the concept. His/her recalls abilities would go up in maths . Tools for teaching mathematics are called ‘maths manipulatives’ and a child learns by manipulating and doing maths experiments with it.
Teach via ‘How maths is used in our daily life’:
Another way to how to teach math easily to your child would be to make them see and live maths. You can provide a great help in math if we start teaching child in a very light and interesting way from our day-to-day life. And it is not so difficult it just needs your little attention in terms of what is the topic going on in the maths class and what all you can explain it from day to day life. Say while baking the cake the child can pick measurement, proportion, time etc and appreciate the practical usage of the concepts learnt in the maths classroom.
Move your focus from performance in maths to understanding maths:
Many students fail to perform under pressure and start disliking mathematics. To avoid this as parent you need to shift you focus from getting good marks to get the understanding of the particular topic. Marks in mathematics is the outcome of the understanding which child is able to display.
So prioritise understanding over maths performance knowing fully that eventually it would start reflecting in child’s maths performance. Also have lots of patience when you are teaching your child as you as every child has its own leaning and absorbing curve, like every child has taken different time, learning to speak or learning to walk so maths also falls in the same category and you need to have complete faith in it.
Ask the right questions at right time:
This is something which every parent need to learn while teaching maths to their wards. If we give chance to child to speak only then he/she opens up and tells you what is going inside his mind. Two very important questions to ask them is
What is your understanding from the given math problem:
This needs to be asked after the child has gone through the question but has not yet attempted it. Many a times child jumps directly to attempt the questions and misses the key part of the problem in hand. When you ask child to explain his/her understanding of the problem then child can narrate the problem in his/ her own words and list all the facts and even tell you that answer would be expected in what units like rupees or meters etc.
How did you do that:
This is the most important question you need to ask after the child has attempted the question and you have not disclosed him/her about the answer. What would happen the child would give the complete disclosure about what was going in his mind, what strategies he / she used to arrive at the answer.
This would help you identify to what extent the child has got an understanding of particular concept and also what all concepts understanding is weak.
Conclusions
As a parent you have huge opportunity to impact & contribute in your child’s maths learning abilities, even if the child is having difficult time at school you can go ahead and make maths interesting at home.
Do implement few idea’s and let me know your experience in the comment box.
