You you have math insecurities and worry that your children will have the same issues, you’re not alone. Many parents who struggled with math fear that their children may have similar problems. I don’t want you to worry. Remedial and even advanced math skills are not genetic.
You can help your child grow to love math by turning everyday activities into a chance to learn and grow.
“Children have a natural ability to reason and problem solve. Parents who show enthusiasm for math will help build these important skills needed for life,” says Dr. Andrea Pastorok, education psychologist for Kumon Math and Reading Centers. She believes that creating a love of math for children should be fun and free from stress.
Here are some activities that you can do with your children which make learning seem more like child’s play:
- Develop number awareness. Draw a large number on a piece of paper and encourage your child to transform the number into his favorite animal, food, person or imaginary character.
- Early estimating. Involve your child in figuring out if a container is big enough to hold her toy cars and blocks.
- Practice counting. Ask your child to count each apple slice or pretzel while dividing snacks onto two plates to share with a sibling or friend.
- When you ask for something, ask for a certain number. (“Can I please have five crayons?”)
- Count together daily; count cars, trees, homes, stoplights. Each day, add a few numbers to your child’s vocabulary.
- Teach fractions by cutting a whole sandwich in half and then in fourths, showing the relationship between “whole, half and fourths” -and then have your child put the sandwich together as a whole. Or, have your child equally share a candy bar between friends or siblings by creating equal parts.
- Hands should be washed for a minimum of 10 seconds. Have your child count to 10 or 15 each time he washes his hands.
- Teach the logic of adding numbers. As she progresses, teach your child to count by twos, fives and tens. Having the ability to skip count with help your child in the future with telling time, counting money and learning multiplication facts.
- Talk about the shapes that you see in your every day life. On a car trip try to spot as many circles, squares or triangles as possible.
- Help him to see counting as a pattern and predict what comes next by asking questions like, “We’re reading page four in our book now. What will the next page be? What was the page we just read?”
These easy activities will be the building blocks for an appreciation of numbers. Plus, you’ll delight in seeing your child demonstrate creative reasoning, knowing you have stimulated it.