Inspiring Kids to Love Math: Tips for Parents

ElevatEd
Math
March 12, 2020

How to inspire your child to learn and love Math?

We understand that every parent has this question that they keep on pondering while trying to teach Math to their kids.

First, let us make this clear to you - it's your positive approach, support, and encouragement that can influence your child's success. So parents must engage with kids in ways that don't involve direct teaching of math. Yes, because even students with minimal anxiety who are struggling to cope up with the complexity of math problems easily get trapped with the notion that math is a difficult subject to learn. This thought can create a fuss in their minds to practice and learn math daily. They tend to lose their interest and eventually their math aptitude too. Many parents think teaching math to kids is as simple as other subjects and they take it for granted. They believe that their kids will inevitably learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, but they don't realize that early math teachings secure the base for the rest of their thinking lives. The math they do in elementary grades lay the foundation of work for the calculations they are going to do beyond. So it is vital to help your child love math when they are young without enforcing any stress on their minds.

Make Math meaningful:

love math

We recommend that every parent needs to invest time in making math practical and meaningful. For this purpose, you need to point out the math involved in the world around you. It is important to point out the math you use in daily life like-

Calculation of the bill when you are in a grocery shop by asking them to total the cost of certain items purchased.
Reading the quantity of the mixture in recipes and asking your child to measure the water using a jar according to the recipe.
Teach them how money works and how transactions are done by asking them to offer the right amount to the shopkeeper, and if that amount is more ask them to get the exact balance after subtracting the bill amount.
Teach them how the area of a rectangle is calculated with breadth and width, and then ask your child to calculate the area of the carpet. You can provide them a measuring tape and let them find out the breadth and width, and finally the area.

Involving such activities in your day-to-day life will make your child aware of how crucial math is. It's important to teach them early math like early reading discussions, where you ask your kids to find similarities between letters of words and read books to them. In a similar way, you need to discuss math situations with them and invoke their curiosity to use math whenever possible.

Make Math fun for your kid:

make math fun

It would be best if you tried to teach Math to kids through engaging activities. So try introducing Math games, because a good math game can provide the right level of challenge that your child is ready to take up. For this purpose, you can start with the board and card games like monopoly, Uno, and chutes and ladder. Then move onto video games that are best for reviewing and practicing skills. Games available on Prodigy and Math are fun intended to invoke an interest in your child towards Math. These board and video games require a long span of attention, which your child is developing with interest in Math.

The next option for you to instill fun is through Math puzzles because working on a puzzle at their own space with peace of mind can help your child to loosen up the pressure that they encounter when doing it inside a classroom. This is a common fear that arises in students when they approach a math problem, and these math puzzles target to decrease this fear and completely take it out of your child.

Make a positive mindset of Math for your child:

inspire students to love math

As a parent, the first thing you need to remember is you should never talk about Math with a negative attitude in front of your child. Even if you were weak in Math or you hated the subject due to long time taking practice, believe this, if your child hears their adult role model say they are not a Math person, they receive an indirect message that not everyone does math. Because if a child starts believing that only extraordinary people were born with math skills or that school math does not matter in daily life, then they will not be as open to learning. The more often children hear offensive comments, the more deeply rooted their aversion of math becomes. So never behave as a content expert when dealing with your kid's math. Make sure your focus is on having a natural conversation on Math, and two-way communication exists all the time.

So, you must make your children realize that math plays a vital role in our daily lives. This should be the first step to alleviate your child's math anxiety and inspire a love for learning math. Remember, developing excellent math skills can open up many doors later in your child's future.

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